[HN Gopher] Apple's crackdown on multicast
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Apple's crackdown on multicast
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 553 points
Date : 2021-08-24 09:52 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thomask.sdf.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (thomask.sdf.org)
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I'm confused. Does he need this form's approval to compile on
| XCode and push over USB to his device, or does he only need it to
| submit to the app store?
|
| Handling specialized permissions one at a time through
| specialized teams could make sense for distribution. allows the
| whole-app reviewers to not have to also become experts on
| multicast best practices/security and having a second reviewer
| handle that.
| chedabob wrote:
| You need the permission granting before you can run it locally.
| It gets added to the provisioning profile that is used as part
| of the signing process, even when run through Xcode.
|
| It's to prevent people bypassing this approval and distributing
| their app through other methods.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Do you even need to sign it to run it locally? I thought that
| was only if you wanted to use the App Store.
| 1f60c wrote:
| Yes. IIRC, you get a short-lived certificate tied to your
| Apple ID.
| chedabob wrote:
| Yep, you have a Developer certificate that signs the binary
| before it gets sent to the device.
|
| If you're just using the free developer program (by signing
| into Xcode with your Apple ID), this is all automated and
| you don't have to get into the nitty-gritty of certificate
| and profile management (but it's all still accessible if
| you want to).
|
| There's some big restrictions on the free program though,
| not least being unable to use certain capabilities in your
| apps (e.g. multicast mentioned in the OP, but also
| background modes, push notifications, etc.) Most of these
| are self-service and don't require asking Apple nicely, but
| you don't have access to the developer portal so cannot add
| them to your app.
| Jyaif wrote:
| In my case, filing the form was not enough: they then asked me by
| email for more info (IP addresses and ports used, a description
| of the protocol, etc...). If you want to save a week of waiting,
| I suggest including all that info upfront in the form.
| withinboredom wrote:
| What on earth do they need that for?
| Jyaif wrote:
| In the entitlement they could whitelist the ports I'm allowed
| to use. Regarding the rest of the information, I'm not sure.
|
| Maybe they use it to judge whether it's OK to allow me to
| broadcast stuff.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think this might be to have some leverage against Google with
| Chromecast, Amazon with Fire stick, etc.
|
| If they can make connecting to those devices a pain for
| developers, it will tip the balance in favour of apple TV and
| devices apple chooses to whitelist.
| bfrog wrote:
| If you consider multicast/broadcast as a way to possibly
| fingerprint a users home network and identify them then this
| makes some good sense.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Could brainy lawyers turn this restrictions on use of private
| property as theft by stealth? I mean you buy a device and then
| Apple successively prevent you from using it as you see fit.
| 57844743385 wrote:
| Really sad that apples walled garden crushes innovation.
| rock_artist wrote:
| I've actually stumbled this during intention to add a musical
| feature to an iOS app metronome I have.
|
| They actually have big troubleshooting section for this
| cumbersome entitlement:
|
| https://ableton.github.io/linkkit/
| punnerud wrote:
| Another strange Apple broadcast "feature": If you try to block
| ARP MAC address broadcast (not IPv4 .255 type) on the router,
| your iPhone and MacBook will not connect to the WiFi.
|
| Try yourself:
|
| ebtables -A INPUT -d ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff -j DROP
|
| ebtables -A FORWARD -d ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff -j DROP
|
| (Tried on standard ASUS router by adding ebtables rules using
| SSH)
|
| To clean: ebtables ---flush Or restart the router, because this
| also flush ebtables
|
| (Edit: Corrected multicast to broadcast)
| neilalexander wrote:
| That's the ethernet broadcast address, not multicast. In
| addition, if you block ARP, you will probably find that not
| very much of IPv4 anything will work on any platform.
| contingencies wrote:
| ARP is specific to ethernet. You can still have a lot of
| functional point to point or other ARP-agnostic IPv4 links.
| neilalexander wrote:
| Indeed, but Wi-Fi is not one of those (as I was responding
| to).
| icehawk wrote:
| They're not connecting to the WiFi because that implicitly
| blocks DHCPDISCOVER.
| punnerud wrote:
| Thank you, learned something new. Can't change the original
| comment now
| iso1210 wrote:
| I think macs can add static arp entries if you did want to
| disable arp for some reason.
|
| If I remember rightly, apple devices when connecting to wifi
|
| 1) Get IP, router, DNS details (either static or via dhcp)
|
| 2) Attempt to load a http page to detect any portals
|
| 3a) If page loads, is connected.
|
| 3b) If page doesn't load but redirects, pops up the portal page
| (in a cut down browser), then eventually connects
|
| 3c) If it doesn't load at all it asks if you want to use the
| wifi even with no internet access
|
| I suspect if it cant configure an IP at all (because you're
| blocking arp and dhcp), it doesn't fully bring the interface
| up. Are you saying that with a static IP entered in wifi you
| can't connect to a wireless network?
| lmilcin wrote:
| People fear what they do not understand.
|
| I know this is pure conjecture with regards to this particular
| situation, but I already had couple of clashes with operations
| people over use of multicast in my applications. They basically
| trying to tell me there is never valid case for multicast so they
| just outright filter it out everywhere with no possibility of
| enabling it.
| tatersolid wrote:
| Multicast is semi-broken on most networks, and devolves into
| pure broadcast on the current LAN or VLAN in most cases. This
| in turn causes chatter havoc on LANs with many devices, such as
| corporate WiFi. Oh, and multicast is totally insecure unless
| you layer your own authentication and encryption on top.
|
| Multicast has been a dream since the 1990s but has been a
| nightmare in practice.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I am talking about multicast for having applications talk to
| each other in a datacenter, not to have that traffic exposed
| to office clients.
|
| I understand most office networks are broken and if I send
| multicast I would just be causing untold mayhem.
|
| I have already resigned myself to the fact that the only way
| to have reliable communication with a client is to use HTTP.
|
| But in a DC where you control all your networking devices,
| configuration and people who maintain it, it should be
| possible to find a configuration that works reliably and
| allows devices to talk to each other without too much hassle.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Every network I have uses multicast just fine. And saying
| "multicast is totally insecure" is like saying "IP is totally
| insecure", it's just nonsense.
| [deleted]
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| I remember developing an MDNS app that ran on android a few years
| ago. Worked great.
|
| This just seems like Apple shooting themselves in the foot, imo.
| slac wrote:
| When using a iOS hosted hotspot, P2P traffic between the devices
| is also blocked. Same setup works fine on Android. Very bizarre.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Not that bizarre, some consumer "routers" (router+switch+AP
| devices) do that by default.
| slac wrote:
| Would you know why? And on switches and routers you can
| surely turn this off... Not so on iOS.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > No doubt a couple of readers will be thinking "well this is
| what Apple/proprietary software is like, what did you expect?"
| I'm extremely familiar with that argument and I don't like it
| very much
|
| Your dislike for a fact doesn't negate it
| 0x0 wrote:
| Actually this makes sense. Already since recent iOS versions have
| started popping up an alert to grant access to local network
| resources per app, I've noticed this popping up on several apps
| that have no business mapping and fingerprinting my LAN.
| Including the Facebook app.
|
| It's weird how a company can be so internally disconnected. This
| entitlement is a good privacy-preserving hurdle to prevent scummy
| apps from interfering with your local network and fingerprinting
| you. On the other hand, the on-device scanning of nudes in
| imessage and csam in iphoto is a total snitchware swatting-as-a-
| service piece of software which only serves to incriminate and
| harass the owner of the device. Such a shame.
| bjackman wrote:
| Your comment nicely addresses the local network restriction,
| but the article already expresses understanding of this. Why
| the extra-stringent multicast thing?
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Instead of trying to define a guideline that says "may not
| use multicast for this, that, blah", apps instead just have
| to request it and explain why. It's probably not a topic that
| the usual review team can consider without extreme levels of
| training beyond what's necessary, and it's a specialty
| network skill with lots of privacy traps. It also allows
| Apple to see who doesn't request the permission but uses
| multicast anyways, because they might be using some sort of
| framework that is unknowingly tracking people, and then they
| can identify and start rejecting that framework storewide.
|
| "How can we ensure every request for multicast escalates to
| someone qualified to make a decision that we can stand
| behind?" An essay question is a great answer, even if people
| hate the uncertainty. Better that than a new guideline!
| neilalexander wrote:
| They're trying to stop people from listening for all
| multicast traffic, presumably because it stops someone from
| fingerprinting based on the things on your network.
|
| The restriction doesn't stop you from using the NetService
| API (or friends) from listening for or advertising specific
| named mDNS services. You can continue to do that today
| without any extra entitlements. What it stops you from doing
| is listening for wildcards and sucking up everything --
| sadly, restricting multicast traffic on regular IP sockets is
| basically an extension of that.
| yaur wrote:
| Multicast can wreak havoc on a WiFi network. Clients that are
| further away from your AP require sending data at a slower
| rate and APs will try to send the data slow enough so that
| all clients can receive the traffic. In practice this means a
| 1mbps multicast stream will take far more than 1% of a
| 100mbps network and in some cases I have seen it shut down a
| network entirely. At my day job we disabled receiving
| multicast (IPTV) feeds over WiFi years ago because we have
| never seen it work well enough to be worth it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The only problem I have with it is that the entitlement system
| controls both what you can submit to the App Store as well as
| what you can locally compile and install.
|
| For example, you can't locally develop a VPN app until you ask
| Apple permission to develop a VPN app. Almost certainly this is
| to appease China, which I find particularly egregious.
|
| Fonts also require an entitlement, but I'm not sure if it's
| just something you need a paid dev account for or if you need
| to specifically grovel to Apple as to why you need it. I doubt
| "I want to submit a pull request to iSH" would be considered a
| valid reason (but correct me if I'm wrong).
|
| Even things like camera access in multitasking views are
| entitlements that your dev account needs to be preapproved for.
| In fact, it wasn't even something that Apple even publicly
| mentioned for a while - only Zoom had it until someone reverse-
| engineered their app bundle and found out about it.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| > For example, you can't locally develop a VPN app until you
| ask Apple permission to develop a VPN app. Almost certainly
| this is to appease China, which I find particularly
| egregious.
|
| Can't you manually add a vpn without an app? I haven't needed
| to configure this myself but presumably if you're bundling
| your own vpn app you can do the manual configuration in
| settings which is significantly easier.
| 0x0 wrote:
| That only works if your VPN uses one of the 2-3 standard
| protocols supported by iOS itself.
|
| If your VPN uses a different protocol, you must (with an
| entitlement) develop an app that gets to execute its code
| for every packet sent and received. For example, if you
| want to create a "VPN" that sends and receives packages by
| audio like an oldschool modem, or if you want to implement
| the WireGuard protocol, or if you want to implement a dns
| tunnel, etc.
|
| The good thing is that any random shady app can't just
| start hijacking and intercepting every network packet for
| the entire device. The bad thing is that it makes difficult
| as an outsider to contribute to open-source VPN apps, since
| you don't have access to the entitlement (which ultimately
| requires access the the private code signing keys and
| provisioning profiles for the developer that DID receive
| the grant (and the debug device must also be registered
| there)).
| shuckles wrote:
| Didn't that get hardened in response to the Onavo
| revelations? In particular, Facebook was using their
| developer certificate to sign spyware installed via MDM. I
| don't remember it being a requirement from the beginning,
| even though China has tightly regulated VPNs for a long time.
| veeti wrote:
| If Facebook has no business using this permission why did App
| Store review approve it? Surely they must know what is going on
| in every app, that's why the App Store is so safe.
| davewritescode wrote:
| Because there are legitimate reasons why Facebook might need
| access to your network for streaming videos to a TV or
| similar uses cases.
|
| Apple doesn't know what every app does, they basically know
| what frameworks/syscalls get made. You can wrap entitlements
| around those things without explicitly knowing exactly what
| an application is actually up to.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Because there are legitimate reasons why Facebook might
| need access to your network for streaming videos to a TV or
| similar uses cases._
|
| If you want Facebook on your iPhone to call someone then
| Apple provides a Phone API.
|
| If you want Facebook on your iPhone to stream to your TV
| then Apple should provide an Apple TV API for Facebook to
| use.
|
| There is no reason whatsoever for Facebook to have any
| direct access to anything on your phone whether its your
| sensors, your microphone, your video, your network.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > If you want Facebook on your iPhone to stream to your
| TV then Apple should provide an Apple TV API for Facebook
| to use.
|
| There is - AirPlay doesn't require local network access
| since it's an API apps can use. Un/fortunately, there are
| multiple competing standards like Chromecast (and other,
| manufacturer-specific casting standards) which require
| the app to do its own local network discovery to find
| available devices.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Try telling that to Uber or Waze. Both of those apps need
| special permissions from Apple _just to keep operating_.
| 0x0 wrote:
| Streaming videos to a TV with airplay can and does happen
| without the app itself needing multicast/broadcast
| permissions, as long as you use the provided frameworks and
| APIs.
| pW9GLKxm9taFEhz wrote:
| And what if an app wants to support Cast in addition to
| or in-place of AirPlay?
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| It's not for AirPlay it's to control Facebook
| applications running on other devices like the Facebook
| Portal. I control our Portal with my phone regularly.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I'm curious, what led you to decide to buy a portal? I
| haven't seen much of it, but it just doesn't have an
| appeal to me.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It is an OUTSTANDING product. We have several elderly
| grandparents who loved visiting their grandkids and
| during the pandemic were cut off. The portal brought them
| back into the feeling of being part of the action and
| getting to see what their grandkids were doing. They were
| all able to set up the Portal without any assistance,
| which was very surprising. Also, it's a fantastic
| Bluetooth speaker when we're not using it for calls.
|
| Did I feel good about inviting Facebook into my living
| room? No. I don't trust that company. But the tradeoff
| was worth it for me.
|
| Edit: I didn't just buy one Portal, I bought 4. One would
| be kind of pointless.
| howinteresting wrote:
| It's for Chromecast, not Airplay.
| SalimoS wrote:
| there is the facebook watch application on smart tv
| l-albertovich wrote:
| Could you explain your posture in the CSAM scanning thing? I'm
| not an apple user but the way I see it, it's not some sort of
| nudism / age detection mechanism where a very incopetent system
| could land you in jail for an old digitalized photo of yourself
| after a shower from 30 years ago when parents actually took
| those kinds of pics.
|
| The way I see it, it just hashes them with whatever mechanism
| they came up with and there are additional mechanisms to verify
| it if for some fringe conincidence your cat pictures hash
| matches some CSAM hash which would be annoying but not the end
| of the world.
|
| Now, in the other hand, let's say the snitch detects actual
| CSAM in someones phone, what's the problem? if it was sent
| without their consent an investigation can lead to who sent it,
| and if it was well, tough shit...
|
| I know it sounds very 1984ish but honestly I don't think it's
| any worst than the kind of surveillance power google has with
| all their platforms combined (chrome, android, google, any web
| thing they didn't kill already).
|
| I guess, what I'm asking for is for real arguments on why and
| how this truly violates privacy and to what extent it is
| problematic for a legit non CSAM consuming person.
|
| I'm not trying to argue with you but to understand this point
| of view since I read so many comments against it but nothing
| that seriously made sense to me.
| feanaro wrote:
| > I know it sounds very 1984ish but honestly I don't think
| it's any worst than the kind of surveillance power google has
| with all their platforms combined (chrome, android, google,
| any web thing they didn't kill already).
|
| This should give you pause.
|
| Why do you think something that sounds 1984ish should be
| acceptable to anyone? Why is it acceptable to you?
|
| The fact that other companies also have advanced surveillance
| power should be reason to push back on that as well, not to
| cede more ground to surveillance.
|
| I guess _your_ logic doesn 't make any kind of sense to _me_.
| l-albertovich wrote:
| Well, I don't use any of that or social media so it's not
| that I embrace it but I don't find it particularly
| offensive compared to the alternatives.
| 0x0 wrote:
| I am not fond of my device burning battery for, and being one
| bitflip away at a jmp-if-zero/jmp-if-not-zero, to calling an
| API whose only purpose is to inform the authorities that I am
| a suspect. If it happened server-side I would have no problem
| with it.
| azinman2 wrote:
| But it ultimately does happen server side. The client is is
| hash creation, but the server runs it thru an elliptical
| curve to see if there's a real match. And if so, it
| performs an additional hash on the server side.
| l-albertovich wrote:
| Thanks for your response, I'll answer just to continue the
| conversation, not to try to invalidate your points or
| anything like that.
|
| I read in other posts there's some sort of review process
| and a way to verify if the image is a match or a collision
| (I don't know much about he details) but I read the latest
| posts about the attacks that were being worked on.
|
| I mean, with the complexity these attacks have I think it'd
| be easier for a ransomware gang to just infect you, plant
| the CSAM, find reliable contact info, verify it, lock your
| phone and extort your through an untrackable side channel
| (if this system didn't exist) or something a bit more
| elaborate / targeted (not even at NSO level).
|
| IDK, I think the phone burns battery for dumber reasons at
| a higher rate, this should only be activated when there's a
| new picture written to disk and it's probably less
| expensive resource wise than whatsapp / telegram / imessage
| checking for new messages periodically don't you think?
|
| I think if they don't royally fuck the process up or turn
| it into some idiotic fake way of getting the cops whatever
| paperwork they need to force you to give them access to
| your files it's a good thing.
| matwood wrote:
| You really should go read Apple's papers, FAQ, etc... on
| the feature. Not saying that has happened here, but there
| are a lot of knee jerk, uninformed opinions and
| information floating around. Also take a look at
| PhotoDNA, which is an older version of a hash system
| already in use by other providers.
|
| In your example about planting CSAM, why would on/off
| device matter since the new feature only checks for items
| going to iCloud anyway? The planting CSAM attack vector
| is available right now for any device connected to FB,
| OneDrive, or Gmail, and I don't think planting material
| has been an issue.
| l-albertovich wrote:
| Well, in the planting scenario I didn't mention the
| attacker uploading it to iCloud directly because that's
| exponentially harder nowadays.
|
| If you're hit by an NSO client and they have an agent
| running in your phone checking in with their C2, what do
| you think would be easier :
|
| 1 - Run a reverse proxy in your phone, steal your
| credentials (or session data) and use that connection to
| upload the material 2 - Write it to disk and wait for the
| media scanner service to pick it up and act on it?
|
| I mean, in the end it's not about the technology but the
| people operating it, if apple is really incompetent and
| law enforcement is shitty as usual then yeah, people
| might end up behind bars for no reason, which sucks but
| in that case I think the focus shouldn't be the
| technology itself but how shitty and unfair the system
| is.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| The answer to why people don't like this is simple, if a
| government like China says "Apple, you're going to add
| these image hashes to the database and report any device
| that has them in the next update or you're going to leave
| China," what do you think Apple is going to do?
|
| I have read their papers, I understand the system and the
| safeguards they put in place, but none of them are good
| enough to have scanning on my device. There is nothing
| that is good enough. On device scanning for "illicit"
| content is a box that cannot be closed.
| l-albertovich wrote:
| They have the whole system at their disposal for that,
| they don't have to do this. As an example (I know I could
| be out of date with this one), do you know why aren't
| there any iMessage bridges that don't require a mac?
|
| IIRC it's deeply entrenched in the system and no one
| reversed their way deep enough to be able to replicate
| it. Now this might sound silly, but it's just an example,
| a contrast maybe of how the hard work the people behind
| asahi are putting or the huge jailbreak community, but
| the idea I'm trying to convey is that the playfield is
| HUGE and they just don't need this.
|
| The one thing I would be 100% concerned about is the
| investigation process for matches because that's mainly
| where human interaction and decision making com into play
| and we humans SUCK, we've put people behind bars for
| years for no reason and with all this AI crap there have
| been a lot of news articles about that kind of stuff and
| that's something we should definitely be worried about,
| but I guess it's less about the tech and more about the
| people in charge right?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I don't understand the idea you are trying to convey.
| iMessage is not impenetrably complex, it is just an ugly
| API that uses an Apple provided certificate and a valid
| serial number as part of the authentication factor.
|
| I also don't agree that the human-in-the-loop part of the
| process is a/the problem. Are you suggesting that it
| should just send the findings straight to the FBI...
| where a human would review it? Or maybe skip all of the
| messy middle part and if the model detects enough CSAM
| just send an APB to the local police to pick you up and
| take you straight to prison with no trial?
| 0x0 wrote:
| There is also the other thing with imessage scanning. It
| seems ripe for abuse, for example a husband forcing it on
| every family member including the spouse (and forcing a
| fake DOB).
|
| Using Apple devices used to be all about how they serve
| the user to bring joy. Knowing they now spend even a
| single cpu instruction on trying to frame the user turns
| the device from something I loved to something I fear.
|
| All the talk about human review and multiple failsafes
| does not smooth things over. App store review is a prime
| example of how their review process can be seriously
| flawed - scam apps and subscriptions sometimes even being
| FEATURED in editorials on the app store.
|
| It does not matter that you will be found innocent in the
| end. Just being put under investigation for csam can make
| anyone's a life living hell. Getting your AppleID
| blocked, even if temporary, can cause severe problems.
|
| When a company advertises that "what happens on your
| phone stays on your phone", and then proceeds to build
| snitchware into the phone that reports on received
| imessages to the "family head of household" and reports
| and UPLOADS photo roll items that were never intended to
| be shared, to human review, well... that company does not
| appear to be honest anymore.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > There is also the other thing with imessage scanning.
| It seems ripe for abuse, for example a husband forcing it
| on every family member including the spouse (and forcing
| a fake DOB).
|
| In addition, this only works for <18 accounts. If the
| abusive figure goes as far as making other family members
| recreate Apple IDs and lie about their age every 5 years
| to keep getting access to iMessage (and other parental
| controls like screen time) then there's not much Apple
| can do.
| ec109685 wrote:
| In that iMessage scenario, the family member has to
| explicitly approve sharing anything with the adult on the
| iCloud account. Nothing happens automatically.
| 0x0 wrote:
| I think you missed the "abusive" part of "abusive head of
| family".
| gedy wrote:
| One question I have on CSAM is: so it only detects known pics
| that law enforcement already has? If so, is that the major
| issue with child porn, e.g. same pics getting passed around?
| Just seems like this won't prevent abuse from occurring, with
| their own new pics and videos.
| l-albertovich wrote:
| I don't think it would prevent "new" abuse but just like
| you might have some material (books, music, whatever) these
| people have their stuff and it's not like every single one
| of them is a producer but they might be part of communities
| and catching some of them might lead law enforcement to
| bigger fish and hopefully producers or at least that's how
| I think the people behind this might be thinking.
| matwood wrote:
| FB, Google, MS, etc... already use a similar hash based
| system called PhotoDNA on any photos in their clouds. They
| reported ~20M+ instances last year, so yeah it seems like
| the same pics do get passed around.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA
| pvarangot wrote:
| I'm not defending the FBI or the Apple feature here, but on
| a lot of cases where abusers get caught it's because they
| were sharing pictures of their victims in groups where they
| exchange other pictures with other people into that.
| Sometimes those other pictures are on this databases. So
| this database matching things generate leads.
|
| Last case I heard about was cleaning personnel in a body
| expression workshop for kids with learning disabilities
| that was sharing new pictures he took of girls in a
| Telegram group. The group was infiltrated by an FBI agent
| that allegedly got the link from a Facebook group that they
| found because of Facebook scanning for known hashes and
| reporting.
| l-albertovich wrote:
| I can't remember the actual title of the article but I
| clearly remember about an instance (I think it was a few
| years ago) where there was a CP ring that operated (at
| least partly) through a whatsapp group and they got
| busted when they accidentally added someone with the
| wrong phone number so yeah, I think there's a lot of "low
| hanging fruit" that could lead to putting some of these
| assholes behind bars.
|
| This happened in argentina btw.
| swiley wrote:
| Facebook _has no business being an app at all._
| francescovv wrote:
| @dang: sdf.org is a multi-tenant domain. It would be nice if HN's
| site link would treat it as such, i.e.:
|
| - /from?site=thomask.sdf.org
|
| - not /from?site=sdf.org
| detaro wrote:
| send the mods an email (link is in the page footer) instead of
| hoping they randomly see your comment
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I think it's pretty clear where Apple is heading. Your device is
| no longer your device anymore. It's theirs and you're just a
| guest on it. Enjoy...
| nullc wrote:
| Hey Apple employees, this is the future you're building:
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
| traceroute66 wrote:
| For a bit of balance, to be fair, Apple do clearly explain the
| reasoning behind the decision[1].
|
| TL;DR It was a well reasoned privacy-focused decision, _not_
| "power-tripping" as the blog author puts it.
|
| [1]https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=0oi77447
| memco wrote:
| Does multicast have other uses outside of local network device
| communication? I've seen several apps trigger alerts that they
| want to access devices on the network if I grant permission and
| I've been saying no since I don't understand why those apps
| would even be trying to connect to another device since they're
| things like food delivery and other service related stuff.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Does multicast have other uses outside of local network
| device communication?
|
| Not with any sort of seriousness I think.
|
| Some major internet peering exchanges used to have multicast
| LANs for whatever reason. I think LINX were one of the last
| ones to operate one, but eventually in 2020 they removed it
| after they reached a point where only two ports were
| connected to it with no significant traffic flowing !
| ricardobeat wrote:
| It would've been fine if it was handled like the other
| permissions, but the author is taking issue with the fact that
| this one requires a _manual_ review, you can 't simply add it
| to your app's entitlements.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| Interesting snippet from SO[1] from January 2021 (so I assume
| its still valid) :
|
| > _The entitlement is needed only to be able to browse and
| advertise arbitrary or wildcard services. If you've added the
| one type you use to your Info.plist, as you detail, you do
| not need the entitlement._
|
| i.e. the entitlement is only required if you are not willing
| or able to restrict your use of multicast to defined
| services.
|
| [1]https://stackoverflow.com/a/65589011
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Coming soon: developers are restricted to using AppleTalk,
| special permission required for IP networking...
| thedougd wrote:
| I have to imagine this is related to the release of Matter, the
| smart home communication standard. Cutting off multicast cuts off
| a standard way existing network connected home automation devices
| work, forcing users to Matter and to ultimately buy into a new
| ecosystem.
| oaiey wrote:
| Thank you. That sounds right. Like that you get an inventory of
| apps which you later can nudge/force into Matter.
| cmelbye wrote:
| It will also seriously harm their TV/AirPlay competitor
| Chromecast, right? I have to imagine that every app with a
| Chromecast integration is using multicast to discover devices,
| but I could be wrong.
| vmception wrote:
| Glad I got out of mobile app development
|
| Looks like its gotten worse the second half of the decade and
| even wages for it have stagnated (except for the FAANGs that pay
| everyone indiscriminately)
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > you have to explain yourself to humans at Apple
|
| This is such an honor. I was starting to suspect no actual humans
| other than the developers and the managers work at FFANG at all
| given how hard it is to contact them. Perhaps in this case it is
| not a human either but a neural network of a sort.
|
| Anyway, I believe everything should be done this way, through
| communicating with humans. Humans should study every ad and every
| app before it gets published (but I support side-loading for
| users willing to opt-out), humans should review every video
| before it gets de-monetized or removed, humans should communicate
| on every appeal. I would vote for a law mandating this.
|
| PS: The more news of this kind the more I feel like buying an
| iPhone perhaps. I don't like how they restrict the users but I
| bloody adore how they restrict the apps (with exception of some
| cases like iDOS, terminal apps, alternative-engine web browsers
| etc - I certainly don't like Apple banning them).
| callmeal wrote:
| >I bloody adore how they restrict the apps
|
| Well, they only restrict apps for us peons. Companies with
| money can use undocumented apis no problem. Case in point:
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/09/zoom-ipad-camera-api-ac...
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Does this go much deeper than zoom? They're the only one's
| I've really heard of. IMO, apples walled off model has some
| pretty serious flaws, so I'm not surprised if there's
| exceptions
|
| * Well, I'm somewhat surprised, because it's apple, and they
| tend to be overly idealistic... but there seems to be a bit
| less of that in the post-Jobs era
| alerighi wrote:
| I don't agree. Developers should be able to develop whatever
| app they want, and not the apps that Apple decides that can be
| developed.
|
| Modern smartphone have a lot of potential that cannot be
| exploited only for policies. One example is network connections
| in general, it's so restricted that is barely usable. For
| example controlling the network interfaces is problematic. On
| iOS (and now also on Android) you can't tell the phone to
| connect to a particular Wi-Fi network, only to a network with a
| prefix and it's not even that reliable. Where that would be
| useful? Of course in an app that connects to some device that
| exposes a Wi-Fi AP.
|
| I develop embedded devices and thanks to mobile phones network
| limitations everything has to pass trough a cloud. That is a
| big improvement for privacy if we ask Apple? I don't think so.
| But there are really no reliable ways to control something in
| your LAN. Well if you give Apple a ton of money to implement
| HomeKit by putting the Apple proprietary chip in your product
| of course, why do you think they impose this limitations?
| okasaki wrote:
| Just because you filled in a form doesn't mean a human looked
| at it.
|
| They could automatically approve/reject and store the form in
| case they need to review it later.
| amelius wrote:
| > I would vote for a law mandating this, humans should
| communicate on every appeal.
|
| Or perhaps we should just have fines in case things go awry. I
| mean, if it works, AI should be allowed. The problem is that it
| doesn't work.
| smoldesu wrote:
| If I bought an iPhone, I'd use it to call people. That's
| probably it.
|
| Android phones are nice because they at least respect my pre-
| existing workflow. I can sync my Nextcloud server to keep my
| notes and photos distributed, I can install different shells to
| get work done on the go, Hell, I can even use it to send a
| firmware payload to my Nintendo Switch in RCM mode. It's my
| swiss-army knife for when it's impractical to carry a full Unix
| machine.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Anyway, I believe everything should be done this way, through
| communicating with humans. Humans should study every ad and
| every app before it gets published
|
| Why? This is actually one of the biggest complaints about the
| App Store review process, because it tends to produce a lot of
| inconsistent results if your app comes anywhere near the gray
| areas of the App Store guidelines.
|
| Mandating human review for everything sounds like a good idea
| for those who imagine perfect, highly-skilled, consistent
| reviewers handling every step of every process, but that's not
| how things work in the real world. You don't actually want to
| legally mandate real humans handling every step of everything,
| unless you want to force everything back to the days of
| bureaucracy and endless back-and-forth communications to get
| everything done.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Because too many fraud/virus ads and spyware/whatever apps.
| But that's on Google. I don't really know how the things are
| on Apple.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The vast majority of what you experience in society has gone
| through human review. All laws go through human review before
| they are enacted. When you go to the grocery store or a
| restaurant, all the food there has been selected by a human
| for you. For some fruits or vegetables, every single item was
| hand-selected for sale during harvest.
|
| When you go into a Target or a Walmart or certainly any small
| retail shop, everything in there was selected for inventory
| by a human buyer. When you read a newspaper, every single
| article was reviewed by a human before it was published.
|
| Product designs are reviewed by humans for utility and
| safety. Drugs are reviewed by humans for efficacy and safety.
| Cars and trains and airplanes were human-reviewed during
| design and assembly, and again at regular intervals. Every
| scientific article is reviewed by humans before publication.
|
| Systems that try to run at scale without human review have
| problems with quality. Amazon tries to run a retail platform
| with minimal human review; it's choked with fakes and scams.
| Social media companies try to run with minimal human review;
| they're full of false information and scams.
| kgarten wrote:
| > Humans should study every ad and every app before it gets
| published
|
| Have you seen Brazil?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)
|
| What you are describing sounds for me exactly like a
| bureaucratic nightmare.
|
| > I don't like how they restrict the users but I bloody adore
| how they restrict the apps
|
| Honestly, that brought me to go away from Apple. They reject
| apps randomly, allow terrible security holes that affect ALL
| applications over relying on safari mobile web views (Pegasus)
| and do nothing against scams (see discussions over family
| sharing): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28203361
| user-the-name wrote:
| > Have you seen Brazil?
|
| Brazil is fiction. Judging how you relate to things in the
| real world by comparing them with things that were made up to
| be funny is not how you achieve insight.
| Shorel wrote:
| Like all the good science fiction, Brazil has a very strong
| component of social commentary.
|
| The time machine is about class division and class warfare.
|
| 1984 is about Stalin's style totalitarianism.
|
| And so on...
| user-the-name wrote:
| Having social commentary is not the same as having
| insight. You can easily comment on society, and have
| those comments be absolute garbage.
|
| Not saying that Brazil does this, but just because
| someone comments, does not mean they have something
| important to say.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| Yeah, but it seems like you're trying to have it both
| ways. On the one hand you're arguing that the insights
| into society can be absolute garbage and on the other
| implying (or suggesting) that Brazil doesn't necessarily
| fall into this category.
|
| So what is it then? Brazil does make interesting points
| about encroaching bureaucracy (and therefore the parents
| post is justified)? I think you took the point about
| Brazil a bit too literally, the poster was never
| suggesting that the world is suddenly exactly that way,
| more highlighting the parallels. I think you need to
| allow yourself to suspend disbelief a little more and
| realise the very deliberate allegorical nature of these
| movies...
|
| I mean, judging by the greyed out appearance of all your
| posts on this topic I would say it seems you're in the
| minority with this kind of opinion.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| Um... Yes, Brazil is fiction but the dystopia it portrays
| is rooted in extrapolations of the times in which it was
| made.
|
| Its absolute nonsense to shoot someone down on the basis
| that they draw parallels to movies or other artforms.
| Especially if those works of fiction are intended as
| warnings / cautionary tales.
|
| As it is i thought the parent comments comparison to Brazil
| was fairly apt in this situation...
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| When I watched Brazil the first time as I was a kid I
| couldn't imagine anything shown there being possible in
| real life. Especially the lack of the right to repair -
| we repaired everything from all the plumbing and electric
| wiring (and that was in apartment buildings, not just in
| private houses, private houses didn't even require any
| bureaucracy at all - people just built for themselves
| whatever way they wanted from whatever materials they
| had, often without any project whatsoever) to all the
| electronics, let alone cars ourselves during those days.
| I also couldn't imagine people being be SWATed in their
| homes for non-violent offenses (by mistake or not).
|
| Now I see the movie has been implemented into life almost
| precisely and the AI with mass surveillance has been
| introduced to make it even worse.
|
| To make it more fun and looking realistic today they even
| portrayed people kinda watching Netflix on their office
| computers when the boss doesn't look (AFAIK computers
| were not actually capable of streaming videos over the
| network during the days the movie was filmed).
| pram wrote:
| My assumption was the homes in Brazil were owned by the
| state, so the restrictions aren't even really hyperbolic.
| If you've ever lived in government/military housing they
| can come and inspect how clean you're keeping the place
| at any time, for example.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Hot take of the year - all fiction is irrelevant and
| incomparable to the real world.
|
| How the hell can anyone come to that conclusion I don't
| know.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Try reading what is actually said before responding.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| That's a bit rich coming from you in this context.
| reedf1 wrote:
| This is a pretty obtuse perspective. Fiction can be written
| for the express purpose of achieving insight. Just because
| something is fictional or humorous doesn't limit that - it
| can emphasise it. See - A Modest Proposal by Jonathan
| Swift.
| user-the-name wrote:
| The converse does not hold, though, that any satire
| _must_ give you insight into the real world.
|
| Just referencing a random piece of satire when discussing
| the real world gives absolutely no insight in and of
| itself.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I'd hardly call one of the most acclaimed dystopian-
| bureaucracy films a 'random bit of satire'. If you've not
| watched and understood it (clearly the latter of that is
| especially true) I dont think you've any right to claim
| it's not relevant to anything.
| user-the-name wrote:
| I've seen it multiple times.
|
| I also understand that it is fiction, and it is
| exaggerated, and it is highly silly.
|
| It is not a prophecy, it not a guide to reality, it is a
| silly film by a guy from Monty Python who was annoyed at
| bureaucracy, a very simple and shared part of human
| experience.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| So why are you criticising someone highlighting annoyance
| of encroaching bureaucracy referencing a work of fiction
| that deals with this "shared part of human experience" in
| a "simple way"?
|
| No one is saying its a 1:1 guide to reality, but as a
| nightmare vision of a dystopia gripped by unnecessary
| administrative apparatus, silly or not, it is a work of
| fiction that takes its root from reality and then makes a
| farce of it.
|
| There are reasons works like kafkaesque, orwellian,
| ballardian become part of the lexicon despite all dealing
| with fictional universes of their own making...
| user-the-name wrote:
| None of that makes "Having an human approve apps is JUST
| LIKE BRAZIL" in any way an insightful thing to say.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I guess you think Monty Python films are just 'silly
| films' too, completely overlooking the intelligent satire
| present throughout the entire films, that will be studied
| and admired as _top level_ satire for generations to
| come?
|
| It's astonishing to me that you can't seem to grasp how
| effective fiction is at laying bare (albeit in an
| exaggerated fashion) the issues present in the real
| world.
| karakanb wrote:
| It doesn't seem like the author is complaining about having to
| contact someone at Apple to have these permissions in an app
| you are building to distribute. If this was for distribution,
| that could have made sense, but apparently this request for
| permission is way before that: you need to contact them simply
| to be able to use the feature on your own device, without
| distributing it anywhere.
|
| This is like being asked to get permission from IETF in order
| to run an HTTP server on your computer, it just doesn't make
| sense.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > This is like being asked to get permission from IETF in
| order to run an HTTP server on your computer, it just doesn't
| make sense.
|
| The iPhone was never intended to cater to developers writing
| personal-use, general computing software on their own
| devices, though. I know it's an unpopular opinion on HN, but
| I don't expect my iPhone to be an open development platform
| and I'm fine with that, even though I'm also a developer and
| software enthusiast.
|
| Realistically, how many people would even be impacted by this
| restriction on multicast packet sending for personally-
| developed apps for personal use only? The number is
| vanishingly small relative to the total iPhone user base. It
| makes sense that Apple wouldn't go out of their way to cater
| to that ultra-niche use case which can still get the access
| they need by requesting the permission.
|
| I know people get angry that the iPhone doesn't cater to
| every single niche personal use case, but honestly I'm fine
| with that. If I need to write a custom app for personal use
| that does something unique, I'm not going to reach for an
| iPhone anyway. However, I use an iPhone as my primary phone
| because Apple has focused on the things that matter for
| making it a good phone that does phone things well, which is
| exactly what most of us actually need.
| shaan7 wrote:
| > It makes sense that Apple wouldn't go out of their way to
| cater to that ultra-niche use case which can still get the
| access they need by requesting the permission.
|
| Well, its not about expecting Apple to put more effort to
| enable some feature. In many cases enabling that feature is
| less effort and Apple instead goes "out of their way" to
| disable such things. _That_ is the problem - and it is not
| specific to iPhone, things like this have happened in the
| past on MacBooks too (see
| https://github.com/onmomo/superdrive-
| enabler/blob/master/src...)
| feanaro wrote:
| Your stance is going to have lots of unforeseen network
| effects which will in the end leave you with no general
| purpose computer at all. What you will be able to run will
| be dictated by large multi-national conglomerates which
| will double as some kind of quasi-states.
|
| Is this really the future you want to see?
| lukeschlather wrote:
| This isn't really that niche. "Personal use" apps are just
| another word for prototype. It is incredibly damaging to
| innovation if you can't even build a little prototype
| without submitting a request to Apple.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Exactly, it should use the same process as other "advanced"
| features like payments or push notifications: you toggle a
| flag in the app entitlements file, it works by default for
| local development, but you can't distribute on the App Store
| without a review.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I'm honestly curious why this specific thing got trapped behind
| manual review. Did a bunch of apps specifically abuse multicast
| networking?
| evilDagmar wrote:
| I don't know about iPhones specifically, but I know I used to
| sigh and grit my teeth every time I'd debug something
| networking-related while I was at a public coffee house or
| something, and there's all those apple laptops, broadcasting
| the user's registered name on the local network for lord only
| knows what reason.
|
| They may well be trying to stop something equally stupid
| happening where someone decided it would be a good idea to
| blast the user's name and phone number out over the local
| network.
| jamil7 wrote:
| Yeah kinda random. Doesn't something similar exist if you want
| to download content from a domain without TLS from within an
| iOS app?
|
| I vaguely remember needing to fill something out to explain why
| I needed users to be able to load content from http (user
| generated content in an app). But it makes a bit more sense in
| that case.
| jannes wrote:
| I believe there must be more to this story.
|
| Maybe it is possible to abuse multicast for
| tracking/fingerprinting in some way and that's why Apple is
| locking it down to approved apps.
|
| It would have been unfeasible to show a permission dialog. How
| would you even begin to explain multicast to the average user
| in 1-2 sentences?
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| Well it can certainly help the app to get a coarse location -
| if it matches an existing network fingerprint (when you visit
| back the same network or it was scanned by other user
| before). This is also why you need location permissions on
| Android for Bluetooth or Wifi direct access.
| dathinab wrote:
| multicast => communicate and find devices on your local
| network
|
| I guess one sentence is enough ;=)
|
| (Sure it's not perfect in it's explanation, but that's
| basically what it boils down to in it's usage.)
| simondotau wrote:
| Could it be used by apps to communicate with other apps on
| the same device?
| neilalexander wrote:
| You can do this without multicast, at least for the period
| of time that the listening app is allowed to run in the
| background (around a couple minutes, unless there are other
| entitlements at play), by just listening for connections on
| the loopback address using a regular socket.
| pja wrote:
| You'd probably just call it "local network access" or
| something similar.
|
| Most people are not running local DNS services which a device
| without this permission could use to probe the local network,
| so it's a fairly accurate description for the majority of
| users I would think?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I'm pretty sure my mother would have to ask me what "local
| network access" meant.
|
| Also, there is nothing mom would install that would
| legitimately require this permission ...
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Did a bunch of apps specifically abuse multicast
| networking?_
|
| My first thought was: how does multicast IP traffic interact on
| cell networks?
|
| IPv6 makes heavy use of multicast (e.g., NDP), and a lot of
| mobile network are now IPv6-only (clients do no get IPv4
| addresses), and so if apps can start sending tracking to
| "everyone" on the network (or a particular base station), could
| that cause problems.
| acomjean wrote:
| That's a interesting point (IPv6)
|
| My limited knowledge of multicast from working with network
| software a while ago was that it's local network only, and
| udp and you needed to "subscribe" to get the broadcast
| messages. There was also a keep alive component which is a
| little different from normal UDP.
|
| I wrote a tool to help debug the system by subscribing and
| then dumping the messages. Perhaps this the problem Apple has
| with it?
|
| My understanding was a lot of routers didn't support
| multicast, I know we had some issues with our network
| configuration.
|
| What happens on IPv6 is a interesting question.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| >so if apps can start sending tracking to "everyone" on the
| network (or a particular base station), could that cause
| problems.
|
| Then simply drop multicast packets? That's also what your ISP
| does with them.
| neilalexander wrote:
| Cellular networks don't quite work like this. Your mobile
| data connection is actually a point-to-point tunnel to a
| gateway somewhere in the provider packet core, so you don't
| really just "leak" multicast packets to other devices on the
| same cell.
|
| Even in many enterprise Wi-Fi networks, it's quite common to
| see either client isolation or multicast filtering in place
| (in part because multicast traffic is often sent at a very
| low data rate and that can have unintended side effects).
| Terretta wrote:
| Yes, a bunch of apps specifically abuse multicast networking,
| Bonjour discovery, etc., to tie to you.
| _jal wrote:
| Yep. I've noticed a couple apps that recently updated
| suddenly wanted to scan the network. One arguably, if you
| squint, might have had a legitimate reason; the other
| obviously didn't.
|
| I assume some surveillance library recently changed to start
| asking for it, but am not sure.
|
| I deleted both and realized it has been a while since I've
| watched my phone over an intercepting proxy; time to sweep
| for bugs again.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I hear this kind of complaining from greybeards all the time. And
| I have some sympathy having grown up in the early 90s when you
| legitimately could tinker with every aspect of your computer. I
| kind of miss that; I suspect I'd miss it more if I had more time.
|
| But as a _customer_ I appreciate this stuff. I need some
| shortcuts to be able to maintain reasonable opsec without
| dedicating my life to dodging surveillance. I'm ok if it makes
| applications harder to develop because there are plenty on the
| App Store already.
|
| If you want a device that can run arbitrary code, Android exists.
| Laptops exist. You have options. I don't want a device like that
| in my pocket, however. It doesn't fit in my personal security
| model.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Apple is also sabotaging the Bluetooth Low-Energy standard, by
| blocking apps from registering certain standard service IDs. For
| example, iOS doesn't allow apps to provide a HID-over-GATT
| service, which could be used to implement HID-compliant
| peripherals (i.e. keyboard, mouse, game controller, etc.).
|
| When you try to launch a BLE service with the required
| identifier, the framework simply throws an error: "The specified
| UUID is not allowed for this operation." :-)
|
| This is why there are no Bluetooth keyboard/mouse/trackpad apps
| in the AppStore, while there are many on Android.
| natch wrote:
| It's not just about the end user here. It's about not empowering
| the device to become a hacking tool in the hands of any random
| hacker with Xcode. I think the author could have done a better
| job acknowledging this.
|
| Apple is seeing that they are in a position of responsibility
| here if they don't draw lines in certain places.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Ah yes, because we don't have small portable devices you can
| load tails or whatever onto and war drive (or war walk) in real
| time. Certainly not ones that are under $100, can run for days
| or be easily operated remotely...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I wonder if this is to thwart the multitude of sketchy iot
| devices on amazon that require calling back to Chinese servers to
| even functions (lightbulbs even, ha)
| musesum wrote:
| Ok, this is about Bonjour, which is pretty cool. David Abramson
| and I released a multiplayer Horse Racing game, called
| PocketJockey on iOS 2.1. During game play each device would play
| its local copy of the William Tell Overture. We used packet
| latency to synchronize tracks. You would then bounce up and down
| as though you were a jockey. If you bounced in time to the music
| your horse would go faster. There was an announcer that would
| announce the status of your horse, which was also in synch. Up to
| 4 players could be playing in the same room with the exact same
| music and announcer emanating from their pocket. All on the
| original iPhone. To use an overused term, the experience was
| "magical" That's what you can do with Bonjour.
|
| So, what's the attack vector? A back door, perhaps? Bonjour
| requires a user approval dialog. A misleading title of the dialog
| may allow someone to connect. Maybe extract private data.
|
| Imagine a peer-to-peer chat app. Say, in Hong Kong -- during a
| protest. Or in Kabul -- during an evacuation.
| cbsmith wrote:
| What's funny, is all these issues were raised when Apple rolled
| out Zeroconf (old name for Bonjour). Apple pointed out that it
| wasn't a vulnerability, and that not doing it was akin to
| punching people who came in the front door, while leaving
| illegal entry unattended.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's also worth noting that Bonjour support for other devices
| was a complete shitshow! I had iTunes installed on my old
| Windows 7 desktop, and Bonjour was the service that taught me
| how to forcibly exit a program in task manager. It must have
| had a memory leak back then, because I remember seeing it
| chew up anywhere from 100 to 500mb of memory...
| cbsmith wrote:
| mDNS worked fine on Windows, it was just Apple's terrible
| implementation that was a disaster.
| nielsbot wrote:
| I thought it used to be called Rendezvous :)
|
| Edit: Yes. "After its introduction in 2002 with Mac OS X 10.2
| as Rendezvous, the software was renamed in 2005 to Bonjour
| following an out-of-court trademark dispute settlement."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_(software)
| pwenzel wrote:
| Funny, I've been calling it Bonjourdevous for what seems a
| very long time.
| Drewza wrote:
| This reminds me when we were working on a business push
| notification app, much like WhatsApp business but back in 2015.
| Apple required users to allow push notifications for the app when
| installing. If a user disabled push notifications then it
| effectively stopped the app from working as it's sole purpose was
| to send push notifications. So to try combat users turning off
| push notifications without realizing what they had done, we would
| prompt them to say that turning off push notifications would stop
| the app from working. We submitted the app to the app store and
| Apple rejected the new version saying that we were forcing users
| to enable push notifications.
|
| I remember being so frustrated with this process of trying to
| convince someone in Apple who just didn't seem to understand why
| this would make sense. They cited that it was a poor user
| experience but I can't imagine a worse experience than a
| messaging app that never received push notifications.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| What bothers me even more, is that you need developer account
| (100$/year), and go through these manual reviews, if you want to
| develop and tests apps on simulator or your own iOS devices.
|
| They already have manual review process for submitting apps to
| the App Store, so I don't understand why I would also need
| permissions before I start developing apps using restricted
| features.
| markb139 wrote:
| My iOS developer story ended shortly after I attempted to start
| back in 2008. To run apps I'd written on a device I had to sign
| up and pay for an account, which I was ok with. Then my account
| was suspended until I proved who I was with a scan of a
| government issued document. As a non US citizen my ID had
| little protection so I said no. After a few months apple agreed
| and refund my $99. So I've never written for iOS. The upside
| was I made a small profit thanks to a swing in the exchange
| rate :)
| swiley wrote:
| This happened to me too, I'm surprised more people don't talk
| about it.
| simonh wrote:
| For personal development the account is free. You only need to
| pay if you are releasing apps to the App Store.
| simondotau wrote:
| This is incorrect. None of the things you describe require a
| paid developer account.
| yarcob wrote:
| You do if you want to use UDP multicast or want to enumerate
| MDNS services. That's what this article is about. If I
| understand correctly, they apparently don't even let you use
| multicast on your own phone for testing without requesting
| permission.
| neilalexander wrote:
| > want to enumerate MDNS services
|
| Only if you want to create a wildcard listener. If you know
| the exact name of the service you want to listen out for,
| you do not need the entitlement.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| This. If you need restricted features, like I mentioned in
| my comment, Apple needs to approve it for your development
| team, before you can create provisioning profile for
| signing the app, to be able to run it on real devices.
|
| However, I was partially wrong (it's been some time since I
| needed this), you can actually use them in the simulator
| without an approval.
|
| List of special entitlements needing an approval:
| https://stackoverflow.com/a/65330176
|
| Additionally, I know that CarPlay entitlements need an
| approval: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/carplay
| /requesting...
| yardie wrote:
| I haven't renewed my Apple Developer subscription in a few
| years but I'm still developing and testing apps at home on the
| free tier. It hasn't been necessary to the subscription for a
| few years. Only if you plan to release to the App Store or want
| developer betas.
| [deleted]
| geophile wrote:
| What I would really like is a Raspberry Pi in an iPhone from
| factor. (Or maybe a Gemini PDA form factor.) Apple has been doing
| nothing but pissing me off for years, definitely including
| scanning photos on the device and now this multicast issue.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Your battery would last 10 minutes.
| geophile wrote:
| Why is that?
| spoonjim wrote:
| How much space would you have left over for a battery after
| adding a Pi Zero, screen, speaker, camera, etc.?
| estebarb wrote:
| Given that this kind of stories are each time more frequent: why
| are we still buying Apple? Its not like the hardware is super
| special or the Unix compatibility (that we already have in Linux
| or even Windows).
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| If they hadn't done the recent transition to arm I'd be ready
| to consider a Linux laptop. Which is a fine option for me but
| other family members would need windows or Mac OS for various
| productivity apps.
| maffydub wrote:
| > ...now I have to prostrate myself before some review committee
| to use a staple of TCP/IP?
|
| Does anyone have any examples of using TCP with multicast? I'm
| not personally aware on any, and I wouldn't describe multicast as
| a staple of TCP.
|
| I guess multicast is a staple of _IP_ (not TCP)... but does Apple
| let your apps use raw IP? (I didn 't think so.)
| macawfish wrote:
| I like the idea of having to grant applications permissions to
| use multicast, and to make the suggested behavior be "deny
| permissions", but whatever this form is I don't like it.
| [deleted]
| qalmakka wrote:
| Apple is getting worse day after day. I'm still hoping that one
| day the EU Commission will finally go after them and force them
| to open up their stuff.
| jjgreen wrote:
| Why? They're clearly an abusive company, just don't do business
| with them.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Why? They're clearly an abusive company, just don't do
| business with them.
|
| The market just does not have the ability to act here.
| Facebook literally incited genocide on the other side of the
| world and Facebook experienced zero repercussions
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| UK government had to plead and beg for a year untill it was
| allowed to release an app to let half the population using
| iPhone register their legal rights:
|
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/10/apple-agrees-
| to-o...
| 57844743385 wrote:
| Because that's where the users are.
| bogwog wrote:
| This is a website of mostly software developers and people
| working in tech.
|
| If you fall into that demographic, how do you avoid doing
| business with Apple? They're entrenched in the duopoly on
| desktop, the duopoly on mobile, and the duopoly on browsers.
|
| Refusing to do business with Apple will only make you feel
| good about yourself, but it will significantly hurt your
| career prospects if you're a working developer, and ruin any
| hope of success if you're an entrepreneur trying to start or
| run a tech company.
|
| For all intents and purposes, they're a monopoly. If you're a
| fan of the Hasbro game, you might disagree on the exact
| definition, but Apple (and peers) is unquestionably in a
| position where they're immune to market forces.
|
| Capitalism doesn't work right when you have companies like
| that.
| jjgreen wrote:
| _If you fall into that demographic, how do you avoid doing
| business with Apple?_
|
| Fairly easily, I have an X1 running Linux as my dev machine
| (I'm backend/ML) and don't have a phone. No need to worry
| about my career, I'm doing OK thanks.
| michaelt wrote:
| The options are:
|
| * Faceless multinational A, that gives lip service to privacy
| and doesn't give a shit about freedom
|
| * Faceless multinational B, that gives lip service to freedom
| and doesn't give a shit about privacy
|
| * Trying to kickstart an alternative ecosystem - a task that
| Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the world, was
| unsuccessful at.
|
| * Not owning a smartphone
| jjgreen wrote:
| Your option 4 works fine for me.
| [deleted]
| kilroy123 wrote:
| We desperately need a true linux phone. No, not the damn
| pinephone which is not ready to be your moms daily driver
| phone.
|
| I'm talking one that actually works and is on par with
| linux desktops.
| superice wrote:
| Let's face it, that is not going to happen. I can barely
| get bluetooth audio to work on my desktop, a truly
| functional purely linux ecosystem for phones that my mom
| can use is at least a decade away (if possible at all).
| Shorel wrote:
| I still remember rooting for the Ubuntu Edge phone and
| watching it fail and get cancelled.
|
| The issue here is that "we" are not many people.
|
| https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/software/why-did-the-
| ubun...
| bogwog wrote:
| What we desperately need is for the tech giants and their
| mono/duopolies to be broken up, or for regulators to
| force them to make changes to their business in ways that
| allow for actual competition.
|
| When that happens, the world might have more choices than
| just Google and Apple for smartphones, or Microsoft and
| Apple for desktop/laptops.
| ayushnix wrote:
| If the state of Linux on desktops is anything to go by,
| Linux on smartphones will never be a success story
| either. I frequently regret buying a ThinkPad with AMD
| CPU/GPU after listening to the propaganda about open
| source GPU drivers. My laptop was basically a paperweight
| for a month until I downgraded linux-firmware package. No
| one wants to deal with this shit.
| shaan7 wrote:
| Curious, which ThinkPad was this? I got a T14s with AMD
| last year and it is one of best laptops I've used till
| date, and works with Linux out of the box, incl graphics,
| networking, USB-C docks etc.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > No one wants to deal with this shit.
|
| YMMV but I do. That kind of hassle is the tax that I'm
| perfectly willing to pay for having FOSS stuff.
|
| Let's celebrate that we have options.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| I'd prefer a libre phone that barely works than any of
| the other bullets.
| spiderice wrote:
| I'm assuming that's what you use then? What kind of phone
| is it?
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Waiting for my Librem 5, ordered a few weeks ago. If all
| goes well, I'll have it next spring.
| spiderice wrote:
| Interesting. I didn't know much about it other than
| having heard the name until I just looked it up. The idea
| of physical kill switches is pretty cool. My only
| question is, given that the OS isn't based on Android,
| does it basically not have any apps? The website mentions
| that it sort of turns HTML 5 apps in to some sort of
| native-like app by downloading it and sandboxing it. Is
| that the only sort of apps that are available for it? Or
| do you install full Linux applications on it? The website
| doesn't make it super clear.
| arsome wrote:
| It's clear that the more traditional "Linux" operating
| systems on the PinePhone/Librem are just not mature, but
| what about a PinePhone/Librem loaded with stock AOSP and
| F-Droid, no GApps.
|
| Lots of stuff just won't be available but that's going to
| be true no matter what non-Apple/Google platform you went
| to. Outside of that though, it should generally provide a
| fairly user-friendly experience.
| swiley wrote:
| Linux desktops got to where they are by people using and
| contributing to "damn window managers that your mom can't
| daily drive."
| metalliqaz wrote:
| After decades Linux still hasn't penetrated the PC
| desktop. Not holding my breath for a viable mobile
| ecosystem.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Not sure if it's worthwhile developing third party apps nowadays.
| collaborative wrote:
| It certainly isn't
| koolhaas wrote:
| Wait, even to develop/test on your own device, without releasing,
| you need to fill out the form?
| merrywhether wrote:
| > Note: You can test your app using the iOS and iPadOS
| simulators without an active entitlement, but using multicast
| and broadcast networking on physical hardware requires the
| entitlement.
|
| -- https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=0oi77447
| valparaiso wrote:
| How old are you? Looks like kids from tictok are amazed with
| rules that were same for the past decade.
| arvinsim wrote:
| This is why as much as the web sucks, it's one true advantage
| over other platforms is that you can develop whatever you want
| without some company restricting you.
| okamiueru wrote:
| Network discovery is something typically restricted by
| browsers, and even if it wasn't, on MacOS/iOS it would be.
| yholio wrote:
| > I'm developing an app of my own creation to install on a device
| in my own possession, and now I have to prostrate myself before
| some review committee to use a staple of TCP/IP?
|
| That's funny, he believes he owns an Apple device. Sorry, no.
| Apple locks down the device with strong crypto and rents you
| limited permissions, they sell a computing service, not a device.
| Apple are the only ones who get to say what code ultimately runs
| on their hardware.
|
| The confusion is common due to the specific way the lease
| agreement is structured: you pay a lump sum for the device
| custody and future rent, you lose that sum if you damage the
| device, and you are responsible for recycling the outdated
| hardware instead of returning it to the owner.
| canadianfella wrote:
| > Apple are the only ones Is this a British thing? Implicitly
| referring to a company as a group of people?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary software
| on the computers in my Civic either. But obviously I own it.
|
| The state of federal law is that you own your iPhone and can
| run whatever software you want on it. Jailbreaking is legal,
| largely because you own your iPhone. The law just doesn't force
| Apple to make it easy for you.
|
| On a practical note, I'm interested in thoughts on why Apple
| might try to lock down multicast, specifically, but I have to
| scroll through dozens of comments arguing about a software
| system (iOS + App Store) that is now over 13 years old. Is
| there anyone on HN today who does not understand how iPhone
| software works? Why do we have to rehash a decade-old
| conversation on every single iPhone/iOS Apple story?
|
| EDIT - Since I'm still in the edit window, I might as well link
| to a comment that seems actually useful and relevant to this
| blog post:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28287064
|
| There are other interesting and useful comments if you scroll
| down...
| VonGuard wrote:
| Well, Honda does actually offer an SDK for its cars, but it
| looks like their cert expired....
| https://developer.hondainnovations.com/
| sillyquiet wrote:
| > Why do we have to rehash a decade-old conversation on every
| single iPhone/iOS Apple story?
|
| Because people are mad - still, and baffled - still, that
| Apple is successful and prosperous despite not catering to
| the niche needs of your average HN commenter.
| FpUser wrote:
| Just FYI - I honestly do not give a flying fuck about how
| successful and prosperous Apple is. The only company whose
| prosperity and well being I care about is my own. As a
| vendor I do not develop for this platform and as a consumer
| I do not use it. The reason for my avoidance in a first
| place are various restrictions put by Apple.
| xrisk wrote:
| You seem to give enough fucks to come and rant on a
| thread dedicated to an Apple device. Maybe just use
| whatever you want instead?
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Yeah, honestly, I do not mind people disliking the Apple
| device philosophy, but it's a bit wearying to have to dig
| through all the same grand comments about walled gardens
| etc etc over and over again in any Apple related
| discussion.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"You seem to give enough fucks to come and rant on a
| thread dedicated to an Apple device"
|
| I discuss lots of things that I do not loose my sleep
| over. This whole HN is just an entertainment for me.
| Distraction from work so that my brain does not melt.
|
| >"Maybe just use whatever you want instead?"
|
| I do use whatever I want. And what I rant about is not
| for you to decide.
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| There's also an easy solution: don't buy an iOS device.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| You would think so, but the repeated comments you see in
| every Apple story makes it seem that folks cannot get
| over the very existence and success of Apple's device and
| app store philosophy enough to let any other discussion
| or criticism emerge.
| wyager wrote:
| Slightly OT, but thinking about your comment I wonder if
| there's any correlation between people who don't care about
| general purpose computing and people who drive commuter cars.
| I would think probably so - in both cases, many just want a
| box that gets them from point A to point B with no interest
| or concern about what's going on inside the box.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| > Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary
| software on the computers in my Civic either. But obviously I
| own it.
|
| You are bound by 17 U.S.C. SS 1201 to not attempt to alter
| the car in ways Honda does not approve.
| colossal wrote:
| Because its the obvious outcome of the ancap principles that
| many on here are strongly in favour of. Company appeals to
| the largest market share by designing devices that work well
| for the majority of people. It just happens that HN readers
| are in the minority on this one.
| belorn wrote:
| Honda could decide that every new sold car in future will
| phone home at the press of the ignition and check if the
| driver should be allowed to start the car. The software
| techniques to turn every car sold into a leasing service is
| not difficult to implement.
|
| If there is such software is inside your civic then no, you
| don't own it. Honda does. The word "ownership" is in part
| defined by the ability to exert control. If Honda controls
| who drives the car, where, how and when, the owner is
| indisputable Honda.
| octopoc wrote:
| > The word "ownership" is in part defined by the ability to
| exert control.
|
| If we were to upgrade the saying "possession is 99% of
| ownership" to the digital ream, it would be something like
| "control is 99% of ownership." The distinction between
| possession and control is only relevant for smart devices.
| shuckles wrote:
| This is already the world we're in with digital car keys
| that have been a thing since 2020. I still own my BMW which
| supports them.
| 8458e112e7b2 wrote:
| Yes and they should consider doing that. After all, Trump
| supporters may drive their Civic to the Capitol. Our
| democracy dies in darkness!!!
| chaorace wrote:
| This is why right to repair laws are important. If you buy
| the hardware, you should implicitly have the right to
| modify the software in-so-far as it is physically possible
| given the hardware package purchased.
|
| It's entirely within the rights of a company to lock down
| their hardware if that's how they sell it to you, but it
| should be equally within the rights of the hardware owner
| to bypass those "protections". If Honda decides to lock
| ignition behind an arbitrary clearance check ( _pulling a
| John Deere_ ), they shouldn't be able to retaliate if that
| lock gets bypassed -- as long as that distinction exists,
| we will always be proper owners of the things that we buy.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Honda could decide that every new sold car in future
| will phone home at the press of the ignition and check if
| the driver should be allowed to start the car._
|
| They may be mandated to do so:
|
| > U.S. Senate bill seeks to require anti-drunk driving
| vehicle tech
|
| * https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-bill-seeks-
| requir...
|
| See also BMW and microtransactions:
|
| * https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/2/21311332/bmw-in-car-
| purcha...
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| > Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary
| software on the computers in my Civic either. But obviously I
| own it.
|
| I can install any aftermarket parts I want to install in my
| Civic, because I own it.
| criddell wrote:
| But you might also make your car illegal to operate on
| public roads, depending on where you live.
| elliekelly wrote:
| But you might _also_ make a novel improvement that
| benefits all of your fellow users. Think about how many
| iPhone features were dreamed up not by Apple but by
| developers or even "hackers" who figured out a clever
| approach to a common problem.
|
| I use the "flashlight" on my iPhone all the time but I
| remember when the only way to use it was to open the
| camera app, switch to video mode, and turn on the flash.
| And Shortcuts is one of the most useful app available for
| an iPhone and it was an idea patched together using APIs
| in a way Apple never intended. In fact, Shortcuts could
| be _way_ better if Apple didn't have so many seemingly
| random and arbitrary limitations.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Honda isn't part of that decision, and the laws apply
| equally to vehicles of all makes. As long as you don't
| modify emissions, you actually get quite a bit of leeway.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Why do we have to rehash a decade-old conversation on every
| single iPhone/iOS Apple story?
|
| Because this is the possibility of people to cash in on their
| "I told you so". Also, it is not too late to either change
| direction or jump ship; if we take this without complaining,
| the situation will only get worse.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary
| software on the computers in my Civic either.
|
| If something goes haywire in my phone, it can't possibly turn
| into a 2 ton death machine, which is something that can
| happen with a car. Cars have stringent safety regulations
| that cell phones do not. So... bad example.
| mcculley wrote:
| Multicast can certainly be used to fingerprint a network. I
| have done that for making apps automatically switch settings.
|
| It is not clear to me why it would it would be different from
| the "Local Network" permission.
| xorcist wrote:
| > Jailbreaking is legal,
|
| Not that simple. Since the DMCA/EUCD, it's complicated.
| grishka wrote:
| > Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary
| software on the computers in my Civic either. But obviously I
| own it.
|
| Cars and their infotaiment systems aren't marketed as
| general-purpose computing devices in the first place. iOS
| devices very much are.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Plus there's far more mods available for honda than there
| ever will be for Apple. Modding them, tuning the ECUs,
| aftermarket hardware and software, you bet baby. The car
| hacker community is very alive
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Apple has been crystal clear in their marketing and
| documentation about how app development and distribution
| works on iOS since the day it was announced in 2008.
|
| The specific question here is why Apple is putting new
| restrictions on multicast. Unfortunately all the
| informative comments are far below this rehash sub thread.
| monocasa wrote:
| The day the iPhone was announced they stated that the app
| model would be http based apps that could be installed
| from anywhere.
| grishka wrote:
| But are regular users aware of any of that? Do they know
| how app publishing works at all? Do they know about the
| absolute disgrace that is the app review process and the
| "guidelines" it follows? Do they know they can't sideload
| apps? Do they know every single binary that an iOS device
| runs has to be signed by Apple?
|
| I bet they don't. And Apple would've lost some part of
| their user base if they were honest about this with their
| users, not just developers.
|
| Though around me in particular, many people became
| acutely aware of that in 2016 when Pokemon Go became huge
| and those with iPhones found out they can't just download
| the game from somewhere else and install it to bypass the
| geographical restrictions in the app store. Some made
| separate Apple IDs for a country where it was available.
| Many were envious to those who use Android, because you'd
| just download an apk and be done with it.
| akerl_ wrote:
| The modern era provides individual humans with greater
| access to information and ability to publish information
| than has ever existed before.
|
| If "regular users" aren't taking the same stance as you,
| maybe it's not because they aren't aware, maybe it's
| because they have different use cases and priorities.
| grishka wrote:
| Every app they download is distributed through the app
| store. If it doesn't fit the app store rules, it simply
| never materializes, and so no one ever sees it. You only
| become aware of these limitations once you want to make
| an app, modify someone else's app, or, like in my
| example, want to use an app that isn't officially
| released in your country.
|
| Apple is very good at disguising these limitations such
| that you don't notice them unless you start actively
| thinking about iOS development one way or another. In
| other words, you only become aware of the walls around
| the walled garden if you try to escape it.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Oh no, you think that if only the users knew about X then
| they would care, when really they don't care so they have
| no reason to know about X. Not to get too off topic but
| Epic thought they'd have popular support for their new
| App Store but the entire world just shrugged and saw it
| as a greedy play for more money.
|
| Anyways I digress, though you really think that Apple not
| wanting you to install an unsanctioned iPhone app is
| going to cause outrage? Sideloading has been a thing for
| a long long time
| enriquto wrote:
| > Why do we have to rehash a decade-old conversation
|
| Because there's new people in the world every day and they
| need to hear this important conversation, which is new for
| them. If you are already aware, it does no harm to you to
| just ignore the conversation.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Sounds like it needs regulation.
| lisper wrote:
| It's a very similar scam to buying a timeshare. The marketing
| pitch is "ownership" but what you are really buying is a
| contractual commitment to pay rent in perpetuity.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > and you are responsible for recycling the outdated hardware
| instead of returning it to the owner
|
| You're not telling the truth.
|
| Apple will recycle any device for you for free. They may even
| pay you for it if it's in reasonable condition and reasonably
| recent.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Hilarious, but not real. You can install whatever you want on
| your phone, but you can't do it through the app store.
| techrat wrote:
| With a host MacOS computer and a certificate that expires
| after 7 days.
|
| Whereas on Android you can simply download the APK from
| within the device. No host PC needed. No developer cert. No
| expiry.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I believe the way these "by request only" entitlements work
| is that the OS locks you out of the functionality entirely if
| you don't hold them.
| captainmuon wrote:
| Well, no. Legally you do own the device with all it's
| molecules. It is just a limited, damaged device.
|
| This is one of thoses cases where I agree with the free market
| people that competition is good. If there were more companies
| that made Apple devices, then you would be able to buy a non-
| defective Apple device, too.
|
| And: In a rational society, I could just download the source
| code and make the change myself. Actually, in a rational
| society the people that make the computers would not be
| incentivized to artifically restrict them!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And only if he wants to publish it in the store; with a
| developer certificate he can install his own app on his own
| device whenever he pleases.
|
| But if you make something for the world at large, you should
| stick to the rules. They're not unreasonable, and they are one
| reason why iOS devices are some of the most secure devices out
| there.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Your argument gets us nowhere. Because we accept the control
| Apple currently has, we are entitled to nothing and should
| accept any arbitrary change? No, that's not how it works. We
| accept the walled garden in a mutually beneficial exchange.
| yholio wrote:
| > Because we accept the control Apple currently has, we are
| entitled to nothing and should accept any arbitrary change?
|
| Nothing has changed, Apple maintained full control all the
| time. You have absolutely no power in this matter and no
| rights, you are simply a revenue source, the only thing you
| can do is cease supplying money to Apple.
|
| I fully support Apple remote bricking all hardware past a
| certain age to drive the sales of newer models. It's just a
| matter of time until you will start to see phones with "3
| years limited software support". Once the 3 years are done, a
| splashscreen appears warning you that the device is no longer
| supported and insecure, thus unusable.
| veeti wrote:
| I think you're a little confused about the role of a peasant
| in a dictatorship.
| [deleted]
| jb1991 wrote:
| > That's funny, he believes he owns an Apple device. Sorry, no.
| Apple locks down the device with strong crypto and rents you
| limited permissions, they sell a computing service, not a
| device. Apple are the only ones who get to say what code
| ultimately runs on their hardware.
|
| If you buy a car, is it your car? You very possibly cannot do
| things with it independently, on your own, without manufacturer
| involvement or without voiding any warranties you have. The
| same idea extends to many things. I'm defending Apple here, but
| this idea that it's not your own device is silly IMO.
|
| (prediction: I'll probably get downvoted)
| jameshart wrote:
| More to the point, with a car if you modify it you may very
| well render it illegal to operate on a public highway. Same
| can certainly apply to a phone's use of the cell network.
| leshenka wrote:
| I'm very fine with voiding my warranty when doing
| modifications to the system, but all I want is to run custom
| software in the userspace (at least). That's how computers
| work and Apple wants us to consider their devices
| computers[0].
|
| Some people might want to have full access to the OS, but
| allowing custom software in the userspace would still be a
| huge step and enough for most people.
|
| p.s. It's hard to compare a computing device to a car because
| what's an equivalent of usespace in car? Changing oil?
| Changing tires? You can do it yourself, you can even change
| spark plugs, without voiding your warranty.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI-iJcC9JUc
| nullwarp wrote:
| I'm not really sure I follow this logic as when you buy a car
| you can do whatever you want to it without effecting the
| warranty as proven by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975
| which states that only if the modification is directly
| responsible for the issue could it be grounds to not service
| under warranty.
| skydhash wrote:
| I heard you cannot remove the seatbelt.
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, but if you do remove the seatbelt that does not void
| the warranty on the engine.
| jb1991 wrote:
| What if you mess around with, say, the OS on a Tesla?
|
| My argument is not about cars, really, it's just a point
| I'm trying to make.
| belorn wrote:
| The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 was likely created
| for a reason. If the same reason is valid for modifying
| the OS on a Tesla, then either the law still apply or the
| law need to be updated to include the words "also valid
| if done in software".
| H1Supreme wrote:
| If it doesn't cause an accident, I don't see the issue.
| I'd love to hack on a Tesla OS.
| tzs wrote:
| You are confusing the hardware with the software.
|
| You own the hardware. You license but do not own the software
| (as is the case with almost all software nowadays, including
| FOSS software). If the software from Apple is not to your
| liking, jailbreak the hardware and install software that is
| more to your liking.
|
| This might take some effort as newer releases of Apple software
| are harder to jailbreak so you might have to stop installing
| new Apple OS releases to give the jailbreaks a chance to catch
| up to what is on your phone.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> and you are responsible for recycling the outdated hardware
| instead of returning it to the owner._
|
| I grokked everything up to this comment. Apple has extensive
| trade-in and recycle programs [1],[2]. Or did you mean
| something else?
|
| [1]:https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in
|
| [2]:https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| It's funny - because we ALSO have folks posting on HN upset
| that things like tiktok want multi-cast permissions / local
| device discovery.
|
| In particular, the author complains about "prostrating"
| themselves, when they actually want to write apps that would
| run on ANY users device that could have relatively serious
| privacy implications because instead of providing a specific
| service they want to do a wildcard discovery.
| smichel17 wrote:
| What galls me about this model is not that it exists, but that
| companies are allowed to use the words "buy" and "own" in their
| marketing and contracts around this. The distinction between
| buying and renting a house, or buying and leasing a car, is
| well understood. But when it comes to renting a console or a
| license to a piece of music, we use the same words as for
| ownership. Maybe we need a new word to describe the "lump sum
| up front but not for ownership" model.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Houses are similar really - you need permission to make
| changes, and are restricted in what you're allowed to do with
| them. Only difference is it's not a private company with that
| control.
| acomjean wrote:
| However houses don't become essentially unsupported and
| obsolete at the whim of some other entity.
|
| A locked down phone without software updates will soon
| become not practical to keep using.
| jounker wrote:
| I'm looking at spending 100k to bring a property up to
| fire code, and possibly rebuilding the floor. Until that
| happens, I won't be able to move in. So, yes, buildings
| do become obsolete at the whim of some other entity.
| acomjean wrote:
| Usually (at least where I live) properties that were at
| code in maintain that status through "grandfathering"
| even if the code changes.
|
| We have an old elevator in my building. It gets inspected
| year to year. If replaced it has to be up to code. A new
| up to code elevator, won't physically fit in the space
| the old one is). We're also in a "historic" district
| which is another entity of denial.
|
| You are right that upgrades can become a nightmare of
| codes/regulations. At least in the US these entities are
| controlled by a government we in theory elect so its at
| least partially our fault. Also at least in the US, when
| the government "takes" or changes a rule that destroys
| value, there is always the threat of a lawsuit for the
| value destroyed.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Good point, but at least with a government, if you pay
| taxes there's usually at least some recourse and a
| potential to get things changed. With a private company,
| you're almost always told to go pound sand.
| Plyphon_ wrote:
| Following the Grenfell disaster in London, flats up and
| down the country have been valued at PS0 and are thus
| unmortgagable due to their use of cladding material that
| no longer is deemed safe.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/nov/02/after-
| grenfell...
| smichel17 wrote:
| It's not just "a" private company, it's _the_ private
| company which sold you the device.
| cryptonector wrote:
| If that's all that bothers you, they can simply never use
| those words. "The NEW XphoneY is just $699!" -- doesn't say
| "buy".
| yholio wrote:
| Maybe someone can mount a legal challenge and establish case
| law. Document the whole buying process, copious advertising
| where Apple says you can purchase the device, then request
| the unlock code from Apple to run custom software.
|
| If they refuse to provide it for purely commercial reasons
| despite having full technical ability to do so, you might
| have a case that you were misled into purchasing a
| subscription service. Ideally, you would find some advertised
| capability that is only enabled for apps sold though the App
| Store, a hidden subscription fee especially considering its
| onerous value.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Currently in progress:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/23/22399008/apple-lawsuit-
| ov...
|
| As much as I want the court to decide that "buy" cannot
| mean anything less than "indefinite and irrevocable
| license" I'm expecting the judge to decide the case in
| Apple's favour on the basis that consumer expectations have
| changed over the past 15 and that no "reasonable person"
| would expect a $15 impulse-buy of an intangible product to
| _last_. After all, you may have your VHS tapes from K-Mart
| you bought 30 years ago, but can you actually watch them?
| And you are "buying" a license to DRM'd content after-all
| and "buy" isn't legally defined that way (Yes, I recognise
| it's a terrible argument, just playing Devils' advocate)
|
| ...or Apple will just change "Buy" to "Get" and it won't
| make a difference to their bottom-line at all. I'll bet
| that Apple's profits - or even revenues - from purchases on
| iTMS for movies and TV shows are a rounding error compared
| to AppleTV+ subscriptions - and iPhone hardware sales, of
| course.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > After all, you may have your VHS tapes from K-Mart you
| bought 30 years ago, but can you actually watch them
|
| I can't tell if this is sarcasm or just a bad example.
| Yes, you can still watch VHS tapes, since they're
| physical media that can be decoded by a VHS playback
| device. You might have trouble finding the hardware, but
| if you have the hardware, it will still run - it's not
| going to require a software update.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > I can't tell if this is sarcasm or just a bad example
|
| A bad example given HN's audience - but I imagine of most
| normal-people, the majority of those with a VCR will have
| left it in the attic or basement and never bothered to
| connect it to their modern LCD TV. If it was a home-video
| camcorder vid then it's likely already converted to DVD
| if it's worth preserving.
| smichel17 wrote:
| Well, that's the difference, isn't it? People were able
| to convert their VHS to DVD. Doing that for DRM would be
| impractical and/or illegal.
| christophilus wrote:
| My guess is that Apple will say: "You're free to root it
| and do what you want, but we don't cover that with a
| warranty."
|
| In that sense, you do own an Apple product. But if you
| want to stay in their nice little walled garden, that
| ownership is more like buying a house that comes with a
| benevolent dictatorship HSA.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Apple will never publicly admit to the possibility of
| rooting their devices, especially not to allow bypassing
| DRM: they'd lose all their friends in Hollywood
| overnight.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Disney is an enormous company, owning pretty much
| everything in the media world, dwarfing other hollywood
| companies.
|
| It has a Market Cap of $320b, way bigger than Sony, Time
| Warner, Viacom and MGM put together.
|
| Apple on the other hand is worth about 7 times as much as
| Disney.
| hermitdev wrote:
| Yes, but a non-insignificant portion of their revenue
| comes from content from third-party media companies. They
| very much have an incentive to play ball with the likes
| of Disney & Sony, despite having the upper hand in terms
| of market cap.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Or they could buy Disney and a couple of others
| microtherion wrote:
| Would you object to the use of the word "buy" for the
| purchase of a house if there is a homeowner's association
| around that can restrict how you paint your house, how often
| you mow your lawn, or whether you can hang laundry outside?
| lostcolony wrote:
| If my Apple purchase gives me an equal level of control in
| Apple's policies as every other holder of an Apple device,
| such that it only requires a majority of votes cast to
| change any of those policies, then no.
|
| If my purchase of a home meant I had no participatory
| rights in the HoA, and they can still change the rules at
| any time on me, and didn't have to disclose in plain
| language the existing ones upfront, then yes.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > The distinction between buying and renting a house, or
| buying and leasing a car
|
| In the UK you can buy a freehold house for PS250k and that's
| it. Or you can rent one for PS800 a month, although that
| confers certain rights. But between those two, you can buy a
| leasehold house, which has obligations to pay a ground rent.
| You can buy a freehold house where you are obligated to pay a
| management company to maintain common areas.
|
| "Buy" and "Rent" are certainly not clear cut.
|
| With a car, I can rent a car from Hertz, or I can buy one for
| cash, or I can lease one, or I can buy one with a loan
| payment secured against the car, again there's no clear line
| between "buy" and "rent"
| smichel17 wrote:
| The main difference between each of those scenarios and the
| one I describe is that _we have words to describe them._
| From your post: freehold, leasehold, buy, rent, loan (and I
| 'll add: mortgage). You don't need to read the fine print
| to know that these are meaningfully different.
|
| I'm on board with the idea that there's a lot of
| arrangements in between full ownership and pure rental, as
| long as we have terms to describe the meaningful
| differences.
| iso1210 wrote:
| There's a big difference between freehold on a new build
| estate and freehold on an older house, the former has
| various conditions attached.
|
| But in all these cases we use the word "buy" to buy the
| car or house, just like we use the word "buy" to take in
| posession of a slab of electronics
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Freehold for PS250k made me laugh! But mostly cry. Salty,
| salty millenial tears.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Literally bought my house for PS250k, completed 11 days
| ago. Sold previous house for PS240k a few minutes
| earlier.
| alistairSH wrote:
| But those various ownership models aren't buried behind
| 100s pages of EULAs. Or, when they are, you hire a lawyer
| to represent your interests in the purchase.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Never dealt with code enforcement or a home owners
| association eh?
| alistairSH wrote:
| You seem to have missed the last half of my comment.
|
| And completely missed the main point - buying/owning a
| house can be complicated, so we frequently involve
| lawyers to represent our interests.
|
| Buying a phone shouldn't be so complicated. But, not only
| are EULAs overly long, they're often written in legalese
| which is beyond the comprehension of the average person.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| The dividing line between "buy" and "rent" can be as clear-
| cut as you like, or as much a grey-zone continuum as you
| like _as long as it is spelled out clearly up front to the
| buyer_.
|
| The problem is not that there are gradations of
| "ownership". The problem is that Apple (and many others)
| conflate the terms and deliberately obfuscate exactly what
| your rights are when you "buy".
| [deleted]
| tialaramex wrote:
| Leasehold houses are a crazy idea and the government should
| certainly have stepped in early as developers began selling
| the freehold (and thus the entitlement to receive ground
| rent _indefinitely_ ) as an investment. Historically most
| of these leases were "peppercorn rent" which means they had
| some notional requirement of rent to be paid, but you were
| not in fact expected to pay rent. But legally _any_
| consideration works, so if you can charge a peppercorn (as
| a legal fiction to make this a contractual arrangement
| between freeholder and leaseholder since cutting up the
| freehold was for whatever reason impossible) you can charge
| PS250 per year. Or PS1000 per year...
|
| Because the government didn't step in early and say "Oh,
| that's just an obsolete feature, you can't do that with it,
| we'll remove it" and pass legislation in say 2005 to set
| the maximum ground rent at a notional PS1, the "investors"
| got bolder. They added escalator clauses, after all PS1000
| per year is a nice earner today, but it won't be much in a
| hundred years, so let's say it doubles every 25 years to
| account for likely inflation plus some profit.
|
| Actually wait, the idiots are still buying them, let's say
| it doubles every _10_ years.
|
| And next thing you know, some of the people who "own" a
| house are paying almost as much rent as people who don't
| "own" a house, oops.
|
| Funny that the property owning, rich investor classes in
| the Tory party don't seem to be in a big hurry to actually
| fix this, although they do say it's a "Priority" (like
| everything else) when confronted. I wonder how much money
| Rishi earns every day from this "mistake" that he never got
| around to doing anything about as chancellor for example...
| mathewsanders wrote:
| Never heard of peppercorn rent until reading your
| comment- as a nice coincidence I was reading a Reddit
| thread on weird NYC trivia that included a link out to
| this article of the Queen visiting NYC in 1970s to
| collect 279 years worth of back rent for Trinity Church
| (which was literally 279 peppercorns)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/10/archives/queen-warmly-
| rec...
| zabatuvajdka wrote:
| I think there is because "rent" and "lease" implies your
| intent is to stay there short-term. "Buy" says you
| literally are buying the home whether it's with your money
| or someone else's via some mortgage terms.
|
| With an Apple device it certainly is muddy waters because
| you purchase hardware while simultaneously in some weird
| lease agreement for the software.
|
| I guess it's like buying a house in a gated community with
| very strict home owners association. You can purchase the
| house but if you want to put a new door on it you gotta go
| through the motions to ultimately get denied the color you
| want, etc.
|
| And if Apple was the association they'd have a neighborhood
| watch ensuring 8PM curfews.
| IanCal wrote:
| > . "Buy" says you literally are buying the home
|
| As they said, with leasehold or some things with freehold
| it's not quite so simple.
|
| I used to have a leasehold house, which I "bought" but
| also sort of rented, or at least rented-ish the land
| while owning-ish what was within the bricks.
|
| I have a freehold house now, but there are restrictive
| covenants which technically govern what I am allowed to
| do to my own property (these are not council/etc
| permissions but private ones).
| iso1210 wrote:
| Indeed, until recently I lived in a freehold house which
| had a covenant saying my hedge could be no higher than 4'
| high, couldn't change the colour of my front door,
| couldn't park a van on my drive, that I had to pay a
| specified private company money each year to do various
| things, with no say over that company.
|
| The term "buy", at least in the UK when it comes to
| housing, is a sliding scale.
| anticristi wrote:
| I nominate Sweden to be the weirdest country when it
| comes to housing ownership.
|
| When buying a flat or a non-detached house, you usually
| fall into an ownership law called "bostadsratt". In
| essence, you don't buy a house. You buy stocks in a
| housing association, which grant you the right to use the
| chosen flat/house. The housing association is pretty much
| run like a company, with a yearly board meeting, a CEO, a
| CFO, etc. Your ownership is proportional to the surface
| area you bought.
| alistairSH wrote:
| It's not much different in the US. Leasehold arrangements
| are less common, but still possible, particularly when
| dealing with "mobile" homes (that generally aren't mobile
| at all once placed).
| smichel17 wrote:
| In a home owner's association, the home owners are part
| of the association. You have to play by the rules, but
| you are also part of the body that _makes_ the rules.
|
| In this case, the party setting the rules is more like
| the rich person who originally built and "sold" the
| houses (but still enforces curfew, and changes the rules
| whenever they feel like it).
| iso1210 wrote:
| > I guess it's like buying a house in a gated community
| with very strict home owners association
|
| So it _is_ buying then.
| beardyw wrote:
| When the lease runs out it reverts to the freeholder,
| though often after a considerable period of time. So not
| owned forever.
| jameshart wrote:
| This is based on a nonsensical idea of what 'ownership'
| allows you to do.
|
| When you buy a phone, you definitely own all the atoms in it.
| You can take it apart and use the bits to make jewelry. You
| can take all the phones you have and assemble them into a
| piece of wall art. Apple has no say in what you do with the
| object.
|
| But your belief that physical ownership of the object should
| mean you can make it do anything you want is... bounded by
| your actual capability to do so.
|
| You can probably extract some of the parts of your phone and
| reuse them - maybe with care and patience you could figure
| out how to use the screen, or the battery, or the camera as
| part of another device. Again, not something Apple can stop
| you doing.
|
| But expecting to be able to use a device to do something you
| want to merely because you know the potential to do so is
| inside is an unrealistic expectation. A cotton t-shirt might
| contain enough thread to be able to be woven into a pair of
| shorts, but you can't complain to the manufacturer that the
| way they made the t-shirt makes it hard for you to turn it
| into shorts. They sold it to you in a useful, valuable
| configuration. They're not obligated to make it easy for you
| to reconfigure it to your will.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Messing with the software, to this day, is also allowed as
| you own the device. The only thing stopping OP is their own
| technical skills/the publicly available tools that allow
| modification of the code in the right way (as in:
| jailbreaking is still legal, but Apple has the right to put
| barriers in the way of it for security reasons).
| jameshart wrote:
| Right - if you ripped the ROM chip off and replaced it
| with your own ROM containing your own OS and drivers for
| all the hardware you could make the hardware do anything
| it's physically capable of accomplishing. And Apple would
| have no legal recourse.
|
| The fact that that is an extremely complicated thing to
| do is _not apple's problem_.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I agree with you - As long as the barrier is _genuinely_
| complexity.
|
| My issue is that Apple (and many other manufacturers,
| this isn't really Apple specific) add complexity _solely_
| to act as digital locks on what is otherwise a fairly
| obvious and achievable task.
|
| Take your ROM example - Why should I even need to rip it
| off and replace it? I know damn well how to flash ROM. I
| have the software tools available. I have the image file
| with all the drivers I need/want. The only thing stopping
| me is digital locks in the device.
|
| Are the locks themselves evil? No, clearly not - I lock
| my house when I leave, and I'll probably leave my phone
| locked most times too.
|
| Are the locks evil if I don't own a key? Pretty clearly
| yes.
|
| Can I rip the whole device apart, interface directly with
| the ROM, and flash it? Probably - assuming I buy some
| much more expensive hardware. But that sorta defeats the
| point of having the device, yes?
|
| Just like it's not reasonable to sell me a car without a
| key.
|
| ---
|
| - Congratulations - you own this brand new car you just
| bought!
|
| - Great! Thank you so much, can I have the keys to drive
| it now?
|
| - No, no... of course not. When you want to drive it, you
| phone us up, and we come unlock and start it for you
|
| - Wait... what? That's bullshit - I just bought this car!
|
| - Well, you're welcome to break a window and hotwire it
| to drive it. But do be aware we'll report this as theft
| to the police, and depending on what you tinker with we
| might also throw the DMCA at you
| jameshart wrote:
| It's not a car without a key, though, is it? It's more
| like a car with a factory-installed speed limiter, which
| the manufacturer is not obliged to help you remove or
| disable... and which, in fact, the manufacturer has good
| reasons for needing to make it hard to disable.
|
| - I just want to be able to drive MY car as fast as I
| like!
|
| - okay, but the trouble is the way this car works, if we
| give you the ability to disable the speed limiter,
| there's literally no way we can do that that doesn't also
| open up the possibility that when you turn on the radio,
| the radio station might broadcast an ad that causes an
| uncontrolled acceleration.
|
| - that's a stupid way to design a car
|
| - well yes, but this is an analogy car, not a real car.
| The real system in question is a turing-complete
| networked device designed to run arbitrary third-party
| software, so... the analogy is going to be slightly
| flawed.
|
| And no, Apple isn't going to report a theft if you
| physically damage your phone, nor are they going to have
| a DMCA complaint if you hack your own phone in ways that
| let you change the way the software on it behaves (you
| might run into DMCS issues if you try to distribute tools
| to help other people do that, which is... definitely
| dubious, but that's what the law says; it doesn't have a
| great deal to do with _this_ case of the Apple
| restrictions on which software the OS trusts to use its
| multicast API, though.)
| horsawlarway wrote:
| - okay, but the trouble is the way this car works, if we
| give you the ability to disable the speed limiter,
| there's literally no way we can do that that doesn't also
| open up the possibility that when you turn on the radio,
| the radio station might broadcast an ad that causes an
| uncontrolled acceleration.
|
| ---
|
| This - this piece here is the fallacy in your argument.
| There absolutely are ways to do this. Matter of fact,
| Apple themselves have a nice little set of digital keys
| that lets them turn all these locks off as they please.
|
| So the argument is not "We have no way to do this safely"
| it's "We don't believe _you_ (the owner of the damn
| device) can be trusted to do this safely. "
|
| Which brings me right back to - you don't own the damn
| thing.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Your car analogy sounds a lot like Tesla with phone-as-
| key, and last I checked Tesla sold 500k of those last
| year and are on track to sell 800k this year. People have
| been locked out of their Teslas when their phone is dead
| and they didn't bring a physical key with them.
|
| Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they
| protect against the threat model of physical access,
| whether that be an attack thanks to leaving the phone
| unlocked or giving your passcode to your friend to use
| for a while. This is all in disregardless of whether or
| not the customer actually has this as part of their
| personal threat model.
| 6yyyyyy wrote:
| >are on track to sell 800k this year
|
| Zero of which will be bought by me.
|
| >Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they
| protect against the threat model of physical access
|
| Apple can add as many arbitrary digital locks as they
| want. The problem is that _they_ keep the key instead of
| giving it to the user.
| judge2020 wrote:
| My point is that, Short of an actual physical key, by
| giving the user the key, they give everyone the key to do
| this to any iPhone in their possession, regardless of
| ownership. Any regulatory change shouldn't nullify Find
| My iPhone protections to the point that theft of iPhones
| becomes lucrative again.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > they didn't bring a physical key with them.
|
| Which they still own and have.
|
| Adding an optional "You phone us and we can unlock your
| car with a copy of your key" is fine by me. As long as I
| still have the fucking key.
|
| ----
|
| For the second part - The security boogey man is not a
| compelling argument to give up ownership rights and enter
| digital serfdom where you only own a device if you use it
| in the way the manufacturer intends and approves of.
|
| I'm not asking them to stop selling devices with locks.
| Hell, I'm even fine with them keeping a copy of the keys
| (which they have right now). I'm just saying: As the
| _owner_ of a computer, I deserve to have a copy of the
| fucking keys that make it work.
| wyager wrote:
| > But your belief that physical ownership of the object
| should mean you can make it do anything you want is...
| bounded by your actual capability to do so.
|
| No object should ever actively, uncompromisingly preclude
| me from using it to do something of which it is capable.
| Objects can _suggest_ I take a certain course of action,
| but ultimately they must follow my instructions without
| trying to impede me. Any other way and I don't truly own
| the object.
| jameshart wrote:
| The object of your iPhone will absolutely not impede you
| in any way from using its antenna to transmit a multicast
| IP packet on a WiFi network.
|
| It is up to you to figure out how to get the electrons in
| the antenna to wiggle in the appropriate manner to make
| that happen, but there are absolutely no constraints
| preventing you, as the owner of said iPhone, from doing
| so.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| This is incorrect! If you rearrange certain atoms in ways
| not approved, you are in violation of 17 U.S.C. SS 1201. If
| this improves your financial standing, you have committed a
| crime under 17 U.S. Code SS 1204 and are subject to not
| more than $500000 or 5 years in prison.
|
| Under the DMCA, if you rearrange the atoms or attempt to
| describe how to rearrange the atoms in a way not approved
| by the phone manufacturer, you are a criminal.
|
| Copyright, and in particular the DMCA, has superseded your
| ownership of the atoms. You must do with them as the true
| owner of the atoms (Apple for example) permits.
| jameshart wrote:
| If you rearrange the atoms into your neighbor's head you
| violate a bunch of laws as well. Owning an object
| certainly doesn't immunize you from your obligations to
| use it in ways that comply with the law.
| joshstrange wrote:
| There is always a point at which you don't control the
| stack, that's been the case for decades now. Just look at
| the CPU and how you can't change the code that interprets
| microcode (I think I'm using that term right) or, even more
| insidious, the Intel ME. Yes, Apple has moved their control
| up the stack but some people pretend the world was an open
| source utopia before Apple created the iPhone. As someone
| who has to provide tech support to my family/friends I can
| tell you I couldn't be happier that they can't screw up
| their phones like they do their computers.
| 6yyyyyy wrote:
| This is also a bad thing.
| happymellon wrote:
| This would make sense if I had the tools to unweave and
| reweave a t-shirt but the manufacturer has added additional
| wire in a cross pattern to specifically prevent this.
|
| Apple actively design their products to not allow you to
| reconfigure them even if you have the tooling. The shirt
| manufacturers do not prevent me from taking a old shirt and
| making oil rags from the fabric.
| jameshart wrote:
| Well in this case, Apple make a 'tool' that lets you send
| multicast packets (it's actually built in to the device,
| but it's behind a lock) - and they will even give you the
| key to unlock that tool and instructions for how to use
| it if you apply through a form on their website!
|
| That doesn't seem quite so evil, does it?
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| If not for your replies elsewhere in this thread I'd
| assume you were being sarcastic.
|
| Yes, a device manufacturer putting locks on _my_ device
| that I can only open by "apply[ing] through a form on
| their website" does seem pretty evil to me.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| If I own the device, why does it have a lock to which I
| do not have a fucking key?
|
| "I sold him the car, officer! I just refuse to give him
| the keys to actually start it."
| zepto wrote:
| If you bought a car without a key it would still be
| yours.
| jameshart wrote:
| Because the main usecase of the device is running
| software written by third parties and if that tool was
| left unlocked occasionally that third party software
| would hack into your home router.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I don't mind the _lock_. I mind that it 's a lock to
| which I don't have the fucking key.
|
| I understand the risks of allowing local network access,
| I'd like to unlock the lock.
|
| Why does apple still have control to say no?
| underdeserver wrote:
| I mean, you sort of do, don't you? You don't need to go
| through this to get the entitlement for a dev build that
| you put on your phone.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| According to apple's explanation page [1] (near the
| middle) you can only run on the simulator without the
| entitlement.
|
| > Note: You can test your app using the iOS and iPadOS
| simulators without an active entitlement, but using
| multicast and broadcast networking on physical hardware
| requires the entitlement.
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=0oi77447
| jameshart wrote:
| You actually can unlock it - just get an app written by a
| trusted developer that uses the multicast functionality,
| and you can use your phone to transmit the multicast
| traffic that app generates.
|
| You're free to access that functionality of your device,
| using software that uses it responsibly.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > using software that uses it responsibly.
|
| So using it solely in ways Apple approves of - Since
| they're the arbiter of "responsible" here.
|
| So how do I own this device again?
|
| Who the fuck is Apple to tell me what responsible use
| looks like on a device that I own, on a network that I
| own, in my own damn home.
| anticristi wrote:
| I would take the analogy even further. While you may
| physically have the capability to do as you please with the
| house you own, you do not have the legal permission to do
| so. The exterior is heavily regulated by city landscaping
| regulations. The interior structure is heavily regulated by
| building codes. Mess with wiring and you can say goodbye to
| your electricity grid connection. Mess with pipes and no
| insurance will cover you.
|
| Similarly, I own a car. Can I take off the seat belts?
| Physically, yes. But legally, a vehicle without a seat
| belts is no longer a car and I lose the right to enjoy
| driving it on public roads.
|
| Ownership was never about physical possession. It's about
| gaining some rights.
|
| Back to phones, the challenge is to demarcate what rights
| does an owner get when they buy a phone. To side with Epic
| Games, the discussion is even more complicated by Apple's
| (purposeful) confusion of owning a phone with having access
| to an ecosystem of apps for that phone. I can do whatever I
| am capable of with my iPhone, but I may lose access to the
| ecosystem of apps.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| This doesn't hold _at all_.
|
| You not being allowed to drive a car without seat belts
| has _nothing_ to do with the car, and everything to do
| with the road.
|
| You own the car. You share the road.
|
| You can drive that car anywhere you want with permission
| from the owners, you just can't _share_ the road we all
| paid for together unless you put on a god-damned seat
| belt so that John the EMT doesn 't have to see the 4th
| smeared human body on the _shared_ road this week when
| you crash it.
| kemayo wrote:
| It's not awful for this _specific_ entitlement, as we
| could say "you own the phone, you share the network".
|
| (You might own some networks. But you also might own some
| roads. We'd stretch the analogy to your home WiFi being
| akin to your driveway, I guess.)
| 6yyyyyy wrote:
| Apple doesn't own the network.
| kemayo wrote:
| Honda doesn't own the roads.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| That t-shirt analogy feels a little stretchy to me. The
| configuration option used to exist. All iPhone developers
| were able to use it. Now Apple is revoking that permission.
| That's hardly "reconfiguring to our will."
| pulse7 wrote:
| In reality they are misusing the words "buy" and "own" to
| make sales... If they would talk about "rents" in marketing,
| sales would drop... So they are "bending the truth" to make
| sales...
| inopinatus wrote:
| I don't believe the author is under any such illusion or
| confusion. It seems clear from the precisely worded text of the
| article that he's perfectly aware of the circumstances, doesn't
| like them, and is willing to articulate that in public with a
| specific example.
|
| By all means throw shade at Apple for tripping on a power
| complex that puts Battersea to shame, but insulting this
| writer's awareness doesn't fly. They are not such a fool as
| suggested.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > they sell a computing service
|
| if anything its becoming more like "consumption" service than
| "computing"
| thomasahle wrote:
| > The confusion is common due to the specific way the lease
| agreement is structured
|
| Also the button on apple.com says "Buy now" not "Rent now".
| simonh wrote:
| It's the same model that has been the mainstream for games
| consoles and mobile games platforms for decades. iOS devices
| are pretty well locked down pro/consumer products that come
| with a managed application distribution system. If that's not
| what you want, there are other options.
|
| It seems to me that if Apple had no more than 10% of the mobile
| market anywhere this just wouldn't be an issue. If that's what
| some people wanted, fine, they could get it. The reason it's a
| problem is, as it turns out, this model works really well for a
| lot of people and is fantastically popular.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| There are no options - there are no longer any mobile devices
| you actually own and control. The right to private property
| has been cancelled by, ironically, free market extremists.
| yholio wrote:
| At least with Android, you have the option to install
| external APKs, as cumbersome as that is.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Also you can install AOSP which is open source android
| operating system on some devices. And some other open
| source Android flavours. Yes, may be with few driver
| blobs, but that's not a restriction, you still can do
| anything with your device on every level.
| contravariant wrote:
| Well and at least some suppliers offer you the option to
| install your own OS on it. At which point any
| restrictions the phone has are at least _technically_
| self-imposed.
| techrat wrote:
| 7 steps isn't cumbersome.
|
| -- 1) Open Chrome.
|
| -- 2) Find and Download APK.
| https://i.imgur.com/ZFZb1uE.png
|
| -- 3) Accept warning and Open APK.
|
| -- 4) Go to settings. (This only has to be done once)
| https://i.imgur.com/R8FzTzP.png
|
| -- 5) Toggle Install Unknown Apps for Chrome. (This only
| has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/K0ADO2q.png
|
| -- 6) Click back (This only has to be done once)
|
| -- 7) Click install. https://i.imgur.com/xVSndex.png
|
| -- Done. https://i.imgur.com/fyasTK9.png
|
| Once you do this for the first time, the process reduces
| down to 4 steps each time after: Open Chrome, Download
| APK, Open APK, Click Install. Done.
| throw0101a wrote:
| -- 8) Wait for a call from Aunt Susan after she installs
| some malware that told her it would boost her cell
| signal. :)
|
| * https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/infected-apkpure/39273/
| 10000truths wrote:
| God forbid we hold users responsible for exercising due
| diligence. No, we must assume everyone is too incompetent
| to distinguish between shady and legit software.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Proffeshionals can't distinguish vulnerabilities in their
| own fucking software, so we have no right to blame the
| users.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _No, we must assume everyone is too incompetent to
| distinguish between shady and legit software._
|
| As someone who has worked retail in the past, and who
| currently works in IT: starting with this assumption
| generally minimizes headaches down the road.
|
| There are only so many hours in the day: people learn
| what they need to get their job done, and tend to move
| on. Some people are quite dim, but others don't have the
| time/energy/motivation/need to learn the details.
| spideymans wrote:
| I think us enthusiasts tend to lose sight of the fact
| that most people don't care to learn about how their
| computers work, just like how most people don't care to
| learn about how their cars work.
| Spivak wrote:
| Every discussion about the average user needs to start
| with https://xkcd.com/2501 to put yourself in the right
| mindset.
| ghaff wrote:
| And pretty much _no one_ understands to any significant
| depth _all_ or probably even most of the technology they
| interact with every day.
| MisterTea wrote:
| First rule of IT club is you DONT TELL AUNT SUSUAN ABOUT
| THIS METHOD!
| [deleted]
| fartcannon wrote:
| It used to be grandma. Because of grandma (and Aunt
| Susan), future generations of children will never have
| the freedom we had growing up.
| simion314 wrote:
| Is not like the Google and Apple stored are not filled
| with garbage, it was recently revealed that Apple refused
| to notify the users that got infected from their "safe"
| store.
|
| About Aunt Susan , you could have the device locked by
| default and have a more complex process to root the
| device, like some code/password that is in the box of the
| device, in that envelope Apple PR team could inform Aunt
| Susan that she should not do this unless she is tech
| competent or a communist.
| narrator wrote:
| Seems like you could copy paste this into every single
| "complaining about Apple" thread on Hacker News for the
| last few years. That people think that Android doesn't
| exist or is exactly the same as Apple, and you can't
| sideload apps or root at least some devices has become a
| widely held belief on Hacker News that has to get
| corrected in every single thread. I count several
| different comments that are mistaken in this way in this
| post alone.
| evilDagmar wrote:
| That's because we don't like telling the people who
| _need_ to be told that you can sideload apps, because
| they 're the very same people who will later complain
| that they downloaded a "Free APK" of Sparkle Monkey
| Defenders eX from some Chinese app store and now their
| phone is vomiting up full-screen interstitial ads every
| few minutes. ...and we're supposed to fix it for them.
| noduerme wrote:
| That's a rather extremist viewpoint but it does have a nice
| rhyme to it.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| > The right to private property has been cancelled by,
| ironically, free market extremists.
|
| This line of argument is frankly incoherent. That many, not
| all, available mobile devices remain firmly under the
| control of their makers after purchase is not because some
| free marketeer (or cabal thereof) foisted these devices
| onto unwilling recipients. This situation came about
| because the majority of mobile device users saw the deal on
| offer and decided they were better off taking it that
| walking. The real source of the status quo is the average
| consumer... no matter their ideology. That buyers weigh
| promises of "Just Works", the status of owning the cool new
| device that's in fashion, and some guardian supposedly
| lurking in the background keeping them safe over your own
| (seemingly apparent) priorities is a matter of each
| individual choice.
|
| Private property rights haven't been cancelled at all or by
| anyone. There simply aren't enough people interested in
| owning devices that they fully control. Insofar as there
| are few alternatives to the status quo... blame the privacy
| activists and those clamoring for "full control" for not
| better convincing the masses that what they're giving up
| for iOS & Android is more than they're getting by buying
| these devices. As a free market extremist myself, I
| guarantee you: if people stop buying these devices because
| the deal is perceived as bad the situation will change.
|
| Finally, if I try to infer what you might be for (rather
| than what you're against), which I do because it's the only
| reason to call out "free market extremists", is that you
| want a small group of "our betters" to decide what exactly
| a mobile device should be, over and above all those that
| find the current deal sufficiently satisfactory. You would
| have your priorities made the only choice over the
| interests of the majority of consumers. Ironically,
| perhaps, you'd eliminate the broader spectrum of choices by
| forcing what choices were allowed... wanted and valued or
| not. Naturally, I'm reading a lot into your short
| comment... but what solution do you really see that isn't a
| free market extremist position that doesn't come close to
| what I think you're saying?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Its so ironic to see 'freedom people' defend a system
| that would make Stalin green with envy.
|
| "saw the deal on offer and decided they were better off
| taking it that walking"
|
| The same reasoning applies to loan sharks, drug dealers
| and mafia. 'Unlimited' free market always degrades into
| oligopoly or Mafia rule.
|
| "you want a small group of "our betters" to decide what
| exactly a mobile device should be"
|
| You want that, and you have that- a small group of
| powerfull men decide to do with your device. Tomorrow
| your device uodates and startps reporting you to police
| for speeding, and there is fuck all you can do.
|
| I am not asking for a communist mobile pgone comitee, I
| am asking for the word ownership to mean something. It's
| not a difficult concept.
| teekert wrote:
| PinePhone?
| simonh wrote:
| I really don't consider myself a free market extremist. I
| fully support regulation for health and safety reasons,
| mandatory accurate and informative product descriptions,
| minimum quality requirements in many areas, consumer
| protection laws such as minimum warranty periods. There are
| many areas where it makes sense for us collectively,
| through our governments, to make sure we as consumers are
| not getting ripped off and get a fair deal. It's just
| balancing out the power disparity between vendors and
| individual customers.
|
| So I am open to arguments for regulating mobile phone
| platforms, if that proves to be necessary. I just don't
| think it is, none of the arguments Ive seen so far are
| compelling. They mostly seem to be sour grapes. "I want to
| buy X product with P, Q, R features and nobody is making
| one, we should force them to by law". No, that's not how
| that works.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > They mostly seem to be sour grapes. "I want to buy X
| product with P, Q, R features and nobody is making one,
| we should force them to by law". No, that's not how that
| works.
|
| I think it's closer to: I bought a 10% black box (90%
| open) widget in the 1990s, and now in 2020 that same
| widget (with a few more functions) is 80% closed. And:
| why can I no longer use a generic computer for what I
| want to use it for? We've forgotten that an open
| distributed learning web is possible, and how instead
| computer literacy (programming) is very low because most
| of us can no longer follow our curiosity and look inside
| technological systems; only 'experts' are allowed to do
| that (someone wrote about that recently, that whenever he
| talked to older/earlier computer hobbyists, how most of
| them mention that they are pretty disappointed by today's
| black box world/web).
|
| And no they're not 'sour grapes', they're just sensing
| the painful ways in which the commons has been plundered,
| and feeling frustrated by the way people such as yourself
| pretend that there are still many benefits to be found in
| locked down/black box platforms and devices, which there
| aren't.
|
| The completely ludicrous part is how normalized all this
| is today. How much our tools are now over-engineered,
| non-modular and non-repairable; how much black box shit
| we produce. Literal shit. Single use shit. Biological
| systems have no waste, yet our current production systems
| produce the most toxic, anti-life sludge the world has
| seen (see Baotou ->
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_UdqZdFr-w). Today we
| produce coffee machines that have iPads sitting in a dock
| with virtual buttons to choose options. An iPad. What the
| fuck. What is that? Infinitely less complex technology
| was used to send people to the moon. What a complete and
| total waste of valuable resources and laborers' time!
|
| I'm talking about how we could have so many more open
| standards and decide to produce only high quality stuff.
| But no, our culture teaches us to discredit those who
| came before and to commoditize tiny incremental updates,
| slapping our own names on them ('branding') to please our
| neglected and alienated souls. I'm so tired of this false
| story of the need for competition. Humans are copying
| machine. It's ok to copy! It's how we learn and grow.
|
| Anyways, to get closer to a 'universal basic inheritance'
| - a commons that respects actual scarcity, and thus also
| the abundance of digital resources (scientific knowledge
| and technological blueprints), we need a new system for
| accounting. I believe http://valueflo.ws can offer us a
| very possible way forward
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymAHXGSM14: they are
| radically distributed supply chain systems using the
| Resource-Event-Agent ontology, built on fully distributed
| tech, e.g. holochain and activitypub.
|
| To see an exciting future that has been buried yet not
| forgotten (it's a new Cybersyn documentary):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJLA2_Ho7X0
| simonh wrote:
| This is so out of touch with the actual real world it's a
| bit concerning. There are plenty of open computing
| platforms kids can learn from these days, and schools are
| full of them. PCs are still pretty open, Linux is easy to
| install, Raspberry Pi and similar devices are cheap and
| accessible. My kids learned about all that stuff at
| school here in the UK. In most developed countries almost
| every kid in school gets to learn how to write at least
| simple programs. I taught my kids Python on their iPads.
|
| >...pretend there are still many benefits to be found in
| locked down platforms and devices, which there isn't.
|
| Now you're in lala land. People derive enormous benefits
| from ubiquitous access to easy to use computer technology
| all the time. They're just not the benefits you
| personally seem to value or understand.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "There are plenty of open computing platforms"
|
| And roughly zero of them can make a phonecall, or a
| contactless payment, or to find directions on the go
| because they are not portable and internet connected.
| skydhash wrote:
| All of the areas you mentioned are heavily regulated. And
| do GPS require internet connection ?
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not sure where this incredibly open world of
| 1999 (to say nothing of 1989 or 1979) existed.
|
| Telephony has always been very closed--fringe phone
| phreaking notwithstanding. Heck, some of us have been
| around long enough to remember when you had to rent a
| phone from a regulated monopoly.
|
| And in the 90s, Windows was mostly your choice in a
| computer. You could build your own PCs but you mostly had
| to run Windows. (Linux was still quite early days at that
| time.)
|
| Access to computing under the hood is much more
| democratized than it used to be even if the vast majority
| of people choose to use effectively appliances for
| certain tasks.
| danaris wrote:
| And, if I recall correctly, in the '90s, you had to pay
| for developer tools for Windows. (Or Mac, but Windows
| was, indeed, mostly your choice in a computer.) Today,
| every mainstream computer shipped--Mac _and_ Windows--has
| a dizzying variety of free-as-in-beer development
| environments available for them, many also free-as-in-
| freedom.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. Developer tools (and consumer software generally)
| were quite expensive. A typical compiler from Microsoft
| was hundreds of dollars. (Borland drove pricing down
| somewhat.) I forget what an MSDN subscription cost but it
| wasn't cheap.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > I bought a 10% black box (90% open) widget in the
| 1990s, and now in 2020 that same widget (with a few more
| functions) is 80% closed.
|
| My mobile phone in the 90s was certainly not 90% open, it
| was far less open than my current iphone. I guess it was
| easier to change the battery, if that's what you mean?
| Swapping a proprietary battery doesn't count as open in
| my book.
|
| My desktop computer in the 90s on the other hand was far
| more closed than my current one.
| SevenSigs wrote:
| > "I want to buy X product with P, Q, R features and
| nobody is making one, we should force them to by law".
| No, that's not how that works.
|
| Not allowing users to have administrator rights is a
| "feature" that was added... it should not be very hard to
| disable it.
| ghaff wrote:
| And, if by mobile, you mean network connected, even if
| you built your own hardware from components, you still
| don't own and control the networks (cellular or
| otherwise) over which that device will communicate.
|
| ADDED: And if it's not obvious from the context, by
| "network" I mean a network that can communicate with the
| broader world, not just a LAN.
| simonh wrote:
| I'm not following you. What's to stop you setting up your
| own local network, entirely under your control?
| danaris wrote:
| For a LAN: Nothing, but you won't be able to communicate
| to anyone outside of it. You also won't be able to access
| it away from wherever you set it up.
|
| For the primary networks at issue here, _cellular_
| networks: The FCC, and regulations restricting what
| devices can access which EM frequencies legally.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Nit: it is possible to build a private LTE/5G network if
| you use appropriate spectrum reserved for that purpose:
|
| * https://www.sierrawireless.com/iot-blog/what-are-
| private-lte...
|
| Not sure about connectivity to the larger / global SS7
| network.
| simonh wrote:
| So, you don't own other people's networks? Right.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Also, you probably don't have the right to make your own
| mobile modem unless you're fine with it needing its own
| car battery and alternator thanks to Qualcomm's patents.
| shuckles wrote:
| Standards patents must be made available to license.
| Apple tried really hard to invest in a competing cellular
| modem provider (Intel) and gave up. Turns out, they're
| really hard to build, and that's why you can't build one.
| Not patents.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Apple did purchase Intel's modem division[0], so while
| they temporarily have started purchasing from Qualcomm,
| maybe they're throwing more R&D at it than Intel did to
| actually compete with Qualcomm within the next few years.
|
| 0: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-to-
| acquire-the-...
| spideymans wrote:
| This situation leaves me so conflicted on the whole
| antitrust, "just force iOS open" thing.
|
| On one hand, the locked down iOS clearly hurts a lot of
| businesses and broader market competition.
|
| On the other hand, Apple has been open and honest (and rather
| boastful) of the locked down nature of iOS since Day 1.
| Consumers have very clearly voted with their wallet time and
| time again that this system (and it's tradeoffs) is the one
| they prefer.
|
| To force iOS open is to undo the choices that consumers have
| made. But to leave iOS restricted is to harm broader business
| competitiveness.
|
| You're right that if Apple had marginal market share, this
| behaviour would not be problematic.
|
| Broadly speaking, I'm not all that sympathetic to the plight
| of the big-name developers like Facebook and Match Group.
| They've collectively made users so cynical about privacy,
| security and the general trustworthiness of software that
| it's prompted users to take refuge behind these hardened
| walled gardens. I just hate to see good independent
| developers have to be harmed as a consequence of that as
| well.
| spyder wrote:
| Just because you buy something for some of the features, it
| doesn't mean you want all the features it has.
| [deleted]
| Joeri wrote:
| Isn't it rather reductionist to say that the closed nature
| of iOS is why people buy it?
|
| I chose iphone because a string of bugs left a sour taste
| in my mouth with android, and inertia locked me in. I
| definitely don't want this level of locking it down, and I
| doubt a majority of iphone buyers want this.
| spideymans wrote:
| Security, privacy, reliability and "it just works" was
| always a major selling point of the iPhone. The various
| software restrictions were a major part of delivering
| that assurance that some third party software wouldn't
| mess with your device. It might not have been a
| motivating factor for you, but it certainly was for a lot
| of consumers.
|
| And regardless, Apple has never hidden the nature of iOS.
| These consumers have clearly decided that the tradeoffs
| of the walled garden were acceptable, despite there being
| plenty of more open alternatives on the market in the
| early days of the iPhone.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Security, privacy, reliability and "it just works" was
| always a major selling point of the iPhone.
|
| Security, privacy, reliability and "it just works" was
| always a major selling point of the Macbook too.
|
| The dichotomy between secure and locked and open but
| unsecure is a complete strawman. It is possible to be
| both open and secure. People would still be able to only
| install applications from the App Store even if the
| iPhone was less locked.
| spideymans wrote:
| I would say that iOS is clearly more secure, private and
| reliable than OS X is.
|
| Apps on Mac OS X can absolutely screw up your machine.
| Adware in particular is a big problem for novice OS X
| users (speaking first hand here, having had to support
| these users). That's an exceptionally rare occurrence on
| iOS.
|
| I'm comfortable with the security model on macOS, but
| would be very concerned if that same model were applied
| to iPhoneOS, where users (myself included) carry
| significantly more private information.
|
| On my phone, I want applications to have access to as
| little private information as possible, even if it's
| detrimental to functionality. Call me a security
| nihilist, but security and privacy is by far my #1
| overriding concern on mobile platforms, given the wealth
| of personally identifying information these devices
| gather.
|
| More succinctly: the threat model on mobile devices is
| not the same as the threat model on personal computers.
| It's inappropriate to apply the same security to both
| platforms.
| dageshi wrote:
| I don't think so. 99.9% of people don't need or want to
| do anything beyond what iPhone/Android currently offers,
| I would put money on the fact that a majority of iphone
| buyers are completely happy with things as they are.
| spideymans wrote:
| It's interesting that, specifically with regards to the
| App Store and iOS API restrictions, the complaints more
| or less exclusively come from two groups:
|
| 1. Third party developers
|
| 2. A subset of power users
|
| The broader end user appears to be quite satisfied with
| the status quo.
|
| It's a weird situation where anti-trust law (which
| ostensibly exists to protect the consumer) is likely in
| opposition to broader consumer sentiment.
|
| It's a very different situation than Microsoft's
| antitrust in the 90s, where consumers strongly supported
| the antitrust actions.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > It's a very different situation than Microsoft's
| antitrust in the 90s, where consumers strongly supported
| the antitrust actions.
|
| Customers mostly didn't care about Microsoft antitrust
| trial in the 90s either. It was mostly affecting third
| party developpers and companies selling computers. The
| situation is not particularly dissimilar except Microsoft
| had a clear monopoly while Apple and Google are a duopoly
| and Apple is seen as a lifestyle brand to defend by a
| rabid minority of its customers while Microsoft was
| strictly seen as a tech company then.
| bitwize wrote:
| Most end users loved Microsoft because they put real
| computing power in the average user's hands at an
| affordable price.
|
| It is also important to note that Internet Explorer was a
| VASTLY SUPERIOR PRODUCT to Netscape. So Microsoft
| competed, fair and square. The antitrust trial was just
| Netscape getting assmad that they were beaten at their
| own game.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Isn't it rather reductionist to say that the closed
| nature of iOS is why people buy it?
|
| No, we've heard plenty of people here on HN specifically
| say that's why they prefer it.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I can't speak for others, but in my case it is indeed one
| of the reasons. I am using my iPhone and iPad solely as
| communication, productivity and entertainment tools. The
| consistency of experience, the relatively higher app
| quality and slightly improved ecosystem safety are
| valuable things to me. I can still create whatever
| application I want in XCode, as long as it doesn't push
| the boundaries of the allowed, and yes, those boundaries
| are a restriction, but one that I am fully aware and
| accepting of.
|
| I am also fully aware that if I want a mobile hackable
| device I will have to find another option and I am fine
| with it.
|
| And by any measure, this already put me in the minority
| of minorities. I doubt most users would want a more open
| iphone if they are made aware of the trade ofs. Why
| should a businessman want to know more technical stuff in
| order to use his phone? just so we geeks would be able to
| sideload stuff? Well, he don't want it, he actively don't
| want the device to give him this freedom, because them he
| would have to be aware of boundaries that he didn't have
| to before, more cognitive workload for him for no value
| added.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The reason it 's a problem is, as it turns out, this model
| works really well for a lot of people and is fantastically
| popular._
|
| Turns out a lot of people don't want to deal with the
| responsibilities of completely owning a device (updates,
| anti-malware, app origin), and are willing to give up some
| control/ownership in exchange for convenience and being able
| to get on with life. (Certainly not everyone of course.)
|
| Whether this view of convenience is short-sighted and will be
| regretted long-term remains to be seen.
| grishka wrote:
| All of today's desktop browsers come with developer tools
| built in. How many people know that, and how many know how
| to use them?
|
| Many Android phones come with unlockable bootloaders.
| Again, how many of those who bought such a phone know about
| this capability?
|
| What I'm trying to say that it's fine to sell a device in a
| locked down state. What's not fine, however, is not
| providing an unlocking mechanism, possibly deliberately
| well-hidden like it is in case of Android bootloaders, for
| those who know what they're doing.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| It's irrelevant. We don't get to tell people what they are
| and are not willing to pay for.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Consumer protection law is the tool that allows that to
| happen.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Ironic that we're talking about using law to protect
| consumers from a company by not allowing them to use a
| walled garden to protect consumers.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The App Store model is about extracting rents. That the
| walled garden offers "protection" to consumers is
| incidental. The "privacy" and "security" stance taken by
| Apple is about protecting their revenues and burnishing
| their image in the eyes of the public. When their
| revenues are at risk (like their concessions with China)
| they take the financially expedient route.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > The App Store model is about extracting rents. That the
| walled garden offers "protection" to consumers is
| incidental.
|
| Not according to many on HN who argue that it is
| precisely why they purchased an iOS device instead of an
| Android one.
|
| I think we have to be really careful about trying to push
| our ideals on others via regulation.
| handrous wrote:
| > Not according to many on HN who argue that it is
| precisely why they purchased an iOS device instead of an
| Android one.
|
| _raises hand_
|
| It's not the only reason, but it _is_ a reason. With
| government asleep at the wheel on regulating things like
| subscriptions, scams, spyware (which is, like, _most_
| software these days), et c., I 'm living the anarcho-
| libertarian dream of paying a corporation to be my
| regulator. As it naturally would in the real world, this
| requires them to be big enough to distort and control
| markets, for it to be worth paying for. Does that mean
| they're behaving as a monopoly? Yeah, probably.
|
| This sucks, of course, but it's what we've got.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| You frame it as a conscious choice, but in my experience
| more than 9 of 10 Apple users are completely ignorant of
| the issues. They only "know what they like" or think "Apple
| is best. " There's no consideration at all of reasons or
| consequences.
| simonh wrote:
| There absolutely is consideration of the reasons or
| consequences relevant to them, that they care about. The
| fact is the things you think they should care about, they
| just flat out don't, and that's fine.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Certainly, the vast majority of people in rich countries
| can afford to care more about fashion (including bubble
| color) than functionality, and this is reflected in their
| smartphone purchases. The frustration you see in these
| comments comes from technologists like the OP thinking
| the same way and repeatedly running into leopard ate my
| face moments.
| handrous wrote:
| > Certainly, the vast majority of people in rich
| countries can afford to care more about fashion
| (including bubble color) than functionality,
|
| I've been an iOS and Android developer--as in, paid to do
| it. Was an Android phone user before doing any mobile
| dev. Finally got my hands on IIRC a 3rd-generation
| Surface at work a few years back, as a test device.
|
| Having extensive experience with the competition, I now
| choose Apple phones and tablets for a few reasons,
| functionality very much among them.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| I don't doubt your experience, but I would expect you to
| be an outlier and that more technologists would prefer a
| device they can program with the same APIs as the
| manufacturer without any gatekeeping and non-buggy web
| access most of all. Having better photo sharing and phone
| call capabilities, less device restarts, notification
| filtering, the ability to caption audio for times when
| having the speaker on is inconvenient or not loud enough,
| and supporting restricted guest accounts are also
| features that most people who don't worry as much about
| fashion would not want to give up.
| handrous wrote:
| > I would expect you to be an outlier and that more
| technologists would prefer a device they can program with
| the same APIs as the manufacturer without any gatekeeping
| and non-buggy web access most of all.
|
| I doubt most "technologists" care about writing code for
| their phone to begin with, and I don't know what you mean
| by "non-buggy web access". That doesn't mean I think most
| "technologists" would pick Apple (I really don't know)
| but I don't think I'm the outlier here, preferences-wise,
| even if I am on which platform I choose.
|
| > Having better photo sharing and phone call
| capabilities, less device restarts
|
| Photo sharing's never been a problem--what am I missing?
| I don't talk on the phone much so maybe that's actually
| terrible (it seems entirely fine?) and I just don't know
| it. Device restarts? How often do you think I restart my
| iOS devices?
|
| > the ability to caption audio for times when having the
| speaker on is inconvenient or not loud enough
|
| That is cool. Not something I'd use personally, but it's
| cool.
|
| > supporting restricted guest accounts are also features
| that
|
| Account management is my biggest complaint about
| I-devices. Mostly the iPad--I don't really care if
| iPhones continue to have only two modes (full, and PIN-
| restricted "screen time" mode--which I don't use anyway,
| so I wouldn't mind if that disappeared, really) but true
| multi-account would be great on the iPad.
|
| > most people who don't worry as much about fashion would
| not want to give up.
|
| Hahahaha.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| I tend to agree with you, but it's also definitely
| possible that segments of the population are unaware of
| issues they would care about if they were.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The same can be said for Android users. Are you really
| taking the snobby attitude that 'real' technical people
| would hack together their phone from parts and open
| source software?
| [deleted]
| zapzupnz wrote:
| I'd be willing to be those 9 out of 10 users barely know
| how to use a desktop computer beyond "click on the button
| for the internet".
|
| I suppose that's the difference: the price they pay in
| user control and freedom is swapped for experiences and
| abilities to which they would never otherwise be exposed.
|
| I prefer not to frame those people as ignorant in a
| negative way. It is we who set them up with those devices
| and taught them how to use them, we were just as
| ignorant.
| nraynaud wrote:
| I tend to agree, it's about how you manage your focus and
| memory in a world of distractions.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| There is absolutely no reason we can't have our cake and
| eat it too.
| api wrote:
| That would require solving hard security problems instead
| of punting on them by whitelisting.
|
| Apple's policies are guided in part by profit motive but
| also by security nihilism.
| [deleted]
| skohan wrote:
| There's no reason these security measures couldn't be
| opt-out
| simonh wrote:
| If we regret it long term, people will start buying
| different products with the features they want.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| They won't, if those products aren't available on the
| market. Which they won't be, because currently the
| "managed" approach yields more revenue.
|
| "Voting with your wallet" doesn't work on most technology
| markets, where products and services are not commodities,
| and where the barriers to entry are insanely high. Yes -
| insanely high. Sure, you can get a $100 computer and a
| $10/month Internet connection and start writing software
| for millions, except it won't do you much good - software
| is the _easy part_. To compete with Facebook, you need to
| bootstrap a whole social network. To compete with Apple
| and Google on the phone market, you 'll need to bootstrap
| your own hardware manufacturing, because all the
| smartphone vendors are into the same user-hostile crap
| these days.
|
| Projects like PinePhone are probably as far as you can
| reasonably get on the "smartphone, except not user
| hostile" front. It's worth looking into why they don't
| succeed. It's not as simple as "people must not _truly_
| want it because they aren 't paying the premium to get
| it".
| praptak wrote:
| The problem is the false marketing around this.
| upearly2 wrote:
| >That's funny, he believes he owns an Apple device. Sorry, no.
|
| It sounds remarkably like a video game console or a stereo
| receiver.
|
| That makes sense really since the main purpose of a consumer
| computer at this point is to, well, 'consume'.
|
| It's funny to think back on an era when the average privately-
| owned computer was bought to actually do something useful.
| [deleted]
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| Lol, think the OP is perhaps delusional, he answered the question
| himself... "well this is what Apple/proprietary software is like,
| what did you expect?"
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| pwenzel wrote:
| Any idea if this will mess up printing in iOS?
| koolhaas wrote:
| 2023 Q1: each TLD you make web requests to will need individual
| human moderated entitlements.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| I fell into this trap with our app. We have an iot app that
| controls 3 generations of hardware now. The first generation
| device is only visible via Netbios lookup, which runs afoul of
| this new multicast lockdown. The later 2 generations support
| Bonjour (mdns) lookup. Unfortunately we are still running into
| problems with customer routers that block or interfere with
| Bonjour service discovery, so we still fall back on Netbios even
| in current generation hardware. Luckily we have history with
| Apple so the approval was fairly straightforward, but I can't
| imagine what the process would entail for a new company/new
| product.
| creeble wrote:
| We "fixed" it with broadcast, it was the only way.
|
| There are indeed a number of old routers out there that do not
| work with mDNS well. This is still a problem, but most <5yo
| routers seem to handle it okay (with the caveat that there are
| a number of cheap APs and extenders that are completely broken
| at basic TCP/IP when clients switch).
|
| We use broadcast for device-to-device discovery, vs device-to-
| phone. It makes for noisy networks, but works better than mDNS
| on a wide range of hardware.
| bitwize wrote:
| Apple's reasoning is probably this: By far, the most common use
| for multicast is mDNS. Apple probably supplies Bonjour APIs which
| you are expected to use for that use case. If you want to do
| something outside of that use case, you are probably Up To No
| Good and Apple will need your name, address, and DUNS number just
| to make sure you aren't.
|
| The thing you have to remember is that Apple has shown the world
| how to run a top-tier mobile platform that supports billions of
| users while, more or less, protecting everyone's privacy and data
| from bad actors. They have decided to err on the side of pissing
| off devs if it came down to that or compromising on this goal.
| And it's made them trillions of dollars.
| neilalexander wrote:
| > My bold prediction is that one day they'll get rid of BSD
| sockets entirely.
|
| This probably isn't as unlikely as you might initially think. I
| remember reading somewhere that Apple had been working on a user-
| space networking stack?
|
| Edit: Apparently I saw it in
| https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/79590?answerId=235...
| -- Eskimo claiming "It came up during the iOS discussion on user
| space networking because NKEs are a major sticking point in
| bringing user space networking to the Mac"
| turminal wrote:
| There's no need for that. Just make http/s the only networking
| api that the kernel exposes and use that for everything. We're
| halfway there with dns over https.
| rocqua wrote:
| Http(s) is the new TCP.
|
| Mostly because anything else gets filtered out at some edge.
| vlan0 wrote:
| I may be in a niche scenario. But I do welcome some sort of
| restriction. On a large campus network running PIM sparse with
| 10kish Apple devices, multicast chews up a fair amount of CPU
| resources on network devices.
|
| Not sure if this is the solution tho..that's out of my realm of
| expertise.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Far more likely that that's the typical mDNS traffic, which is
| out of scope of this new permission.
| vlan0 wrote:
| You're not wrong
| turminal wrote:
| Another attempt to kill everything that isn't routed through http
| and restricted by whatever restrictions http imposes or will
| impose in the future.
| neilalexander wrote:
| This isn't really true. The entitlement is to stop malicious
| apps from listening to all of the mDNS beacons coming from
| devices on your network. It doesn't stop you listening
| for/advertising specific named services using the NetService
| API, and it doesn't stop you from sending/receiving unicast
| traffic using regular sockets.
| turminal wrote:
| Things like this don't happen at once. But we're slowly
| getting there.
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