[HN Gopher] iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Eu...
___________________________________________________________________
iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe
Author : walterbell
Score : 520 points
Date : 2023-04-22 23:51 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techradar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techradar.com)
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Move to Europe, get side loading
| nuker wrote:
| I bet you a tenner Facebook immediately moves out of EU App Store
| and will be sideload only, with all privacy related permissions
| required for the app to run.
| simion314 wrote:
| They did not done this on Android.
|
| But you know what is reality and not FUD? App Stores pushing
| legal apps out, at least people in EU could have an option when
| this will continue to happen.
| oefnak wrote:
| Sure, I'll take that bet. Can you definite 'immediately'? Would
| a month suffice?
| nuker wrote:
| When the first iOS version with sideloading will roll out.
| MikusR wrote:
| And? It will also allow stuff like the smart voting app that
| apple removed because a dictator told them to.
| iaml wrote:
| It won't, because the smart voting app was not blocked in eu.
| The markets where these kinda app would be needed are also
| the ones where sideloading will likely not arrive.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Given that this is Europe where the GDPR requires consent
| regardless of how any app is installed you stand to lose that
| bet (which is why this is not the case on Android).
|
| The Apple cartel protection-racket framing makes only sense in
| a market without privacy regulations, in the EU choice and
| privacy aren't mutually exclusive.
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| Exactly!
| hiram112 wrote:
| I imagine the real reason here is that EU companies want to avoid
| the 30% fee Apple collects on all online purchases with IOS apps.
| It's doubtful any savings will be passed on to consumers, anyway.
|
| It's likely Apple will do what Google does and instead tie their
| app store into various apis and services (e.g. Google Play) so
| that side-loaded apps have a very difficult if not impossible
| time integrating with the phone in a way that users expect and
| desire.
|
| Seems like the EU bureaucracy goes after big entrenched US tech
| companies again and again, but they never really obtain any W's.
| They spent years fighting against Microsoft's bundling of IE and
| Media Player, and all that ever happened was that MS released
| some Euro-only version of a few Windows releases without the
| bundling. But both IE and Media Player were displaced within a
| few years anyway, regardless of any EU rules.
|
| Likewise, all the GPDR rules seemed to have accomplished is that
| every site now has an annoying-as-hell "click here to accept all
| cookies" button that everyone has learned to just auto accept. I
| doubt Europeans have anymore actual privacy compared to the rest
| of us, especially since their own governments are far more
| interested in tracking their citizens online behavior with regard
| to tax avoidance, hate speech, etc - they absolutely require US
| Big Tech to keep track of all this info for them to quietly
| subpoena as needed.
| whazor wrote:
| I am looking forward! I tried side loading the YouTube with
| sponsorblock and adblock, which worked but renewing the apps
| weekly is too much effort.
| ec109685 wrote:
| YouTube Premium is a pretty good deal and actually pays the
| creators when you watch their videos.
| tgv wrote:
| Except a lot of it isn't theirs to publish.
| MikusR wrote:
| sponsorblock, sponsorblock, sponsorblock. YouTube Premium
| doesn't have it.
| MikusR wrote:
| Altstore does it automatically
| walterbell wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35553758
| c-hendricks wrote:
| I use Vinegar to remove ads and SponsorBlock, but just access
| youtube via the web interface. PIP, background audio, all those
| native OS features that Apple's developer terms forbid
| companies from charging for but let YouTube charge for, works.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| Is something like early days mobile app development gold rush
| likely to happen? There is likely an enormous market for
| unofficial clients, foss games, game engines, emulators, and of
| course torrenting of all kinds.
|
| Will European iPhone sales skyrocket? Will you be able to change
| region if you move to Europe?
|
| So many interesting questions.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| They should just allow installing other operating systems
| instead.
|
| If you want out of their platform, install Linux OS on your phone
| and have whatever you want there.
|
| Wouldn't that make everybody happy - Apple, EU and customers?
| wiseowise wrote:
| That should be the next step, yes.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| My argument is that it should be the only step that is fair
| for both sides, efficient to implement, collapses
| bureaucratic policy to single sentence, doesn't create "issue
| created here - must be solved somewhere else" problems,
| nourishes progress, gives true freedom to purchased item
| owners, preserves good capitalistic incentives and many more.
|
| Sideloading will be full of complicated very important
| details sucking out live from all parties involved.
|
| I think we all agree that it should not be possible to
| unintentionally click or autoload link that downloads some
| settings app that looks like ie. iOS settings app but is
| developed by some shady party that has access to ie. your
| biometric security primitives, can look like/impersonate any
| built-in app/OS behavior etc.
| zgk7iqea wrote:
| Linux on mobile is a _major_ step back both in terms of
| security and usability. Modern smartphone App Sandboxes are
| immensely better than desktop paradigms. Sideloading should be
| allowed, tho.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Security and usability are not the only dimensions that
| matter.
|
| There are people who would like to use devices they own in
| alternative ways ie. to develop, experiment or simply not to
| throw perfectly functioning, un-updatable, just few years old
| hardware to the trash bin.
|
| Apple doesn't want their platform to be polluted with
| privileged, unsigned code. They don't want next security
| breach news headline to include their name in it if it
| originated from code they haven't verified/signed/created -
| because they put a lot of effort into securing their platform
| and profit out of it.
|
| Allowing running alternative OSes would make both sides
| happy, no?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I would love that option, but even with Ahasi for iPhones
| you'll still need to deal with the horrific kludge that is the
| modern modem. Open source networking stacks exist but they're
| still extremely limited. Just look at how long it took for the
| Pinephone to receive calls, and they interface with the modem
| over a standard protocol like USB.
|
| The ability to install your own OS would be a nice end goal,
| but at this pace it'll take at least another 10 years of
| government regulation before Apple would even consider allowing
| that.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| It would create incentives to explore and benefit from those
| efforts creating healthy non-monopoly ecosystem.
|
| It would likely create second market for their devices that
| Apple doesn't care about (because they don't release new iOS
| updates for old devices), it would create incentive for
| vendors to support open source through legacy hardware reuse
| (what is your hardware legacy reuse score as opposed to
| destroy-recycle-as-minerals score kind of thing).
|
| We live in times where shoes have longer life span than many
| billions transistor devices which is mad, non eco friendly
| status quo where government should be stepping in instead of
| some cherry picked nonsense that will take endless decades to
| iron out and at the end of the day will make all parties
| simply unhappy.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Nobody wants Linux on an iPhone. People want both the Apple
| ecosystem, but also apps that do not want to participate in it
| or apps that Apple does not like.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| People would also want to bring their own wine to every
| restaurant and some would love to bring their own eggs and
| ask kitchen to make it for them at a discount - isn't it
| better to just put few benches as picnic area outside to make
| everybody happy?
|
| You can't meet all demands of everybody at the same time
| because what they think they're entitled to is mutually
| exclusive.
|
| Let's not kid ourselves - Apple won't give full, unrestricted
| access for sideloaded code ever. It's going to run in some
| kind of highly isolated enclave at best, with grayed out
| icons, warning sign overlay, scary long list of permissions
| given when installing, untrusted code popups when launching,
| permission re-confirmations when running, without access to
| ie. background code execution, limited apis etc. - they must
| be brainstorming any loopholes left by snail speed EU
| bureaucracy as we speak to make it as user unfriendly and
| limited as possible.
|
| All that wasted energy could be channeled into something that
| actually is good for people, gives them freedom while
| preserving Apple's deserved profit participation in the
| market they've created themselves out of thin air.
| Vosporos wrote:
| Another W for Europe
| josephcsible wrote:
| Hasn't Apple always said the reason they don't allow sideloading
| was that it'd be impossible without compromising security? So are
| they claiming their European iDevices won't be secure anymore, or
| are they admitting they were lying before and that the real
| reason was nothing but greed?
| wiseowise wrote:
| You know what's the most secure device? The one that doesn't
| work.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Is MacOS insecure then?
| simooooo wrote:
| You could probably argue yes, since a 3rd party app isn't
| validated in any way by apple
| charcircuit wrote:
| Security isn't binary. European iDevices will likely have more
| malware installed on them on average than US iDevices.
| awestroke wrote:
| I thought iPhone apps were sandboxed, making malware
| impossible?
| charcircuit wrote:
| That limits what they can do, but it doesn't mean they
| can't do anything malicious. Someone could make a YouTube
| app which removes ads, but steals your session so that they
| can viewbot or spam comment sections with legit accounts.
| jakub_jo wrote:
| This is something which would also work using an app
| store app -- where's the app store benefit in your point?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Distribution is centralized and Apple can end
| distribution if the app gets reported and add the malware
| to their malware scanning.
|
| While possible, it should be more rare. When working on
| massive platforms it is typically the goal to minimize
| metrics like malware installs as opposed to trying to
| make them 0. The relative probabilities are important.
| pxoe wrote:
| Scanning apps for malware, preventing them from being
| installed or run, and warning about malicious apps,
| doesn't actually require centralized distribution or
| limiting sideloading. This malware problem with
| sideloading has already been solved, by Google with Play
| Protect on mobile, by every other system that allows
| 'sideloading' and has some kind of antivirus, and by
| Apple themselves in macOS.
|
| Compared to an antivirus (macos, windows, android, all
| have protection built-in), that could detect a malicious
| app, or receive a report about a malicious app and then
| block it from being run, having an app store in the chain
| might not even be that much help or be at all different
| in that process.
|
| If anything, giving potential malware apps a chance to be
| published on an app store, get that scale, visibility and
| access to an audience outright, and hang there even if
| for a little bit before getting taken down, could be
| kinda worse than if malware apps were distributed across
| smaller venues. Where, through what channel could a
| malware app get access to biggest amount of people?
| Through a centralized app store. (especially if it's the
| only one on the platform, and the only way to install
| apps*, forcing all users of the platform to be there.) An
| app store gives potential malware makers access to an
| existing audience, ready to be exploited, and a
| centralized app store ensures that it's the biggest
| audience possible.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| iPhones been hacked for ages already.
| danielheath wrote:
| Perhaps "has it ever been hacked" is not the best metric,
| unless you prefer to keep your devices under armed guard,
| encased in several meters of concrete, without an internet
| connection.
|
| IMO, https://zerodium.com/program.html is a good indication
| of "what would it cost to hack me using a never-before-seen
| exploit".
| ec109685 wrote:
| Still surprising to me that AWS has firecracker and iOS
| still runs things like Javascript along side every other
| app on the system.
| 0xy wrote:
| You wrongly assumed that zero days are single-use. Pegasus
| used the same exploits in dozens or hundreds of targets.
| danielheath wrote:
| I didn't assume that at all - that's why I specified a
| never-before-seen vulnerability.
| syrrim wrote:
| They're presumably claiming that european devices will be less
| secure.
| AlfeG wrote:
| Or usability of this feature would be so frustrating, that no
| one will use. Constant security popups on every start, very
| limited available API for apps, etc...
| kaba0 wrote:
| That would just give them a huge fine.
| toyg wrote:
| There is law and there is the spirit of the law. The ECJ
| can be _pretty fast_ when they feel someone is taking the
| piss.
| amelius wrote:
| The cookie popups can be very annoying and confusing and
| they didn't do anything about that.
| kuschku wrote:
| They're slowly working through the backlog. Even Google
| gave in and put a single, working "deny all tracking"
| button front and center.
| phatfish wrote:
| Recently I've noticed more sites providing a visible
| "Deny All" button, rather than the dark pattern of going
| through and unchecking 5, 10, 50 tracking cookies
| individually, or having to dig out a button hidden
| somewhere.
|
| I assume this was how it was intended to function, but
| the kind people that run internet websites intentionally
| made it more difficult.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Indeed, the bigger players were, I think, specifically
| contacted.
|
| Lots of smaller players still do it, though, so maybe
| this is not the most effective enforcement style.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| They have actually fined several large tracking providers
| for their shady cookie popups because opting out was
| harder than opting in.
|
| European DPAs aren't getting enough funding to take on
| this problem, but they haven't been sitting still either.
| mrkramer wrote:
| That's why Windows is beautiful, all APIs are open for
| developers to use for whatever they want.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| It's one thing to provide security in the kindergarden. It's
| another thing to provide security in the jail. So far Apple's
| track record is kindergarden security. They do have tech in
| place, but how that tech would resist big bad world outside the
| wall remains to be seen. My guess would be that there will be
| apps breaking the jails in the first years and 10 years later
| things will settle on and it'll become relatively safe to
| sideload untrusted apps.
|
| Of course if one's smart enough to only download apps from
| reputable websites, then the only worry will be privacy issues
| which are probably not important for most people
| alerighi wrote:
| The claim is nonsense. If it was true Android devices would be
| full of malware, that is clearly not the case.
| jb1991 wrote:
| > there's a far greater chance that hackers can make it onto
| the [Android] platform to distribute malware through
| malicious apps [compared to iPhone].
|
| https://nordvpn.com/blog/ios-vs-android-security/
| [deleted]
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Why couldn't both be true?
| nomel wrote:
| How would app review work?
| kaba0 wrote:
| AppStore pretty much only does a "grep -r porn" on every
| app, hardly meaningful "security". If anything, it's best
| at mysteriously flagging competitor apps.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| The whole point is that there would be no app review for
| independent apps.
|
| It's not a technical change in who distributes the
| software, it's a radical change that results in developers
| being able to give apps to users without being in a
| contractual relationship with Apple period.
| ulfw wrote:
| They are required by European law to allow it, wether they see
| it as compromising security or not. This isn't Apple's
| decision.
| asddubs wrote:
| I suppose it's true in the same way that having knives in your
| kitchen makes it more likely that you might cut yourself. but a
| kitchen without knives kind of sucks so
| chronogram wrote:
| I don't think kitchens should have knives. I want my parents
| to be able to eat, but with knives in the kitchen they
| occasionally cut their fingers and I don't want to have to
| deal with that. You could make it optional but before you
| know it they'll get knives anyway. Besides, most people eat
| processed food and don't want to make meals from scratch so
| this is only a problem for a handful of people.
|
| (yes yes this is satire)
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| My parents want to cook dinner with knives. They have no
| interest in side loading custom applications though.
| solarkraft wrote:
| My parents want to install applications of their choosing
| on their devices, but have no interest in knife-cooked
| dinner.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I find this hard to believe. Don't get me wrong, freedom
| to sideload apps is a thing I believe in, but saying
| 'it's because my parents want more freedom' is certainly
| a stretch.
| webmobdev wrote:
| If Apple's social media team is hiring, you should apply -
| this is exactly the irritating kind of replies I get when I
| criticise some Apple product. :)
| neximo64 wrote:
| How they will do it likely is they will charge to install the
| App store app and assign it a CA and require it to sign the
| apps downloaded from that app store.
|
| The sideloading of apps will technically be an apple approved
| app but enforced by another app store. To put it another way
| you would not be able to randomly download an unsigned app.
| amelius wrote:
| They will probably put all the side loaded apps in the same
| sandbox. Yikes ...
| paxys wrote:
| I anticipate a huge market developing for unlocked second hand
| European iPhones in the US.
| Nursie wrote:
| Define huge.
|
| I think a small community of interested parties will pop up,
| but it's unlikely to be more than a blip compared to device
| sales in general.
| layer8 wrote:
| This will likely be tied to the same region setting that the
| App Store is currently tied to. If you want to use side
| loading, you'd be tied to a European region setting, and
| Apple's services will be restricted to the European versions.
| jacknews wrote:
| The feature will be tied to your apple id, obviously.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| That would actually be illegal under the DMA:
|
| _[...]gatekeepers shall:_
|
| _[...](f) refrain from requiring business users or end users
| to subscribe to or register with any other core platform
| services identified pursuant to Article 3 or which meets the
| thresholds in Article 3(2)(b) as a condition to access, sign
| up or register to any of their core platform services
| identified pursuant to that Article_
|
| "Operating systems" is part of the "core platform services"
| definition. Locking the use of iOS or sideloading
| capabilities behind an Apple ID (another "core platform
| service") would be a violation of the provision.
| jacknews wrote:
| But that's the European law. Nothing stopping them locking
| sideloading for US Apple IDs I think? I mean they can't
| require an EU apple ID in order to access the sideloading
| feature, but they could deny it to US apple IDs.
| Vespasian wrote:
| They'll have to provide a way for edge cases like if
| someone moves from the US to the EU.
|
| In General the US government will have to come up with
| their own version of the DMA if they or their voters deem
| it important.
| 1over137 wrote:
| Oh that would suck. I've had an iPhone since the week they
| were first released, but never associated an Apple ID with
| one. My whole beef with the App Store is it requires telling
| Apple who I am. If you have to associate your phone with an
| Apple ID to get sideloading then this is hardly progress for
| me.
| vxNsr wrote:
| How have you used an iPhone without an Apple ID? 90% of the
| features are useless without it...
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Can't you already sideload in the US, with a few restrictions
| like 3 apps max, you need to refresh the install every week?
| josephcsible wrote:
| I don't think that will happen, because I expect Apple will do
| something along the lines of "unless an iDevice is signed in
| with an account with a verified EU credit card, and/or has been
| in the EU for more than 50% of the time over the last year,
| disable the ability to sideload and wipe all existing
| sideloaded apps".
| stale2002 wrote:
| They could try.
|
| At which point they get fined billions of dollars.
|
| The EU does not mess around.
|
| And the more "clever" apple tries to be, the higher the fine
| will be.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Apple already has a system to set the region of a device. Go
| to Settings > General > Language and Region > Region.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I don't think Apple will use that system for this, since
| doing so would let everyone sideload just by setting their
| region to somewhere in Europe even if they're not actually
| there.
| zarzavat wrote:
| The existence of that system makes the use of some other
| more baroque system hard to defend.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| I presume doing the latter would raise serious CFAA concerns.
| wildpeaks wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if Google pushes its own iOS marketplace:
| first by making an exclusive Blink-based Chrome to get people to
| open up their phones if they want to download "the real Chrome".
|
| Then there is little friction to get people to install more
| (because the hard part is already done), and they could even
| merge Android and iOS into a single marketplace for mobile apps.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if Google pushes its own iOS
| marketplace: first by making an exclusive Blink-based Chrome to
| get people to open up their phones if they want to download
| "the real Chrome".
|
| Who even cares about Chrome on iOS?
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/north...
| cubefox wrote:
| What does this graph have to do with your question?
| Kwpolska wrote:
| People who want their bookmarks and tabs synced between
| desktop Chrome and mobile?
| wiseowise wrote:
| And that amounts to 5-10%?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's several million people.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Fortnite has that, it wasn't enough to threaten Google
| monopoly on Android.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| That's just one app, there's going to be thousands of
| apps available to install once installing your own apps
| is an option.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Chrome is also one app, what's your point though? That
| Google will come up with more favorable app store on iOS?
| Hardly unlikely, given how much inertia people have.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| I don't know if it's likely but there are a lot of big
| brands that can't get their apps on the Apple store for
| whatever reason, just like Fortnite and Chrome. With
| enough of them, alternative app stores will take off.
|
| I think the biggest category is alternative stores.
|
| Like NVIDIA Geforce Now or Steam.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| You don't need blink for that though. The current WebKit
| based chrome syncs just fine.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I think a Play Store on iOS is possible, but unlikely. Google
| haven't done it on any of the open platforms they have Chrome
| on.
|
| [edit] Ultimately, they have almost no incentive. They can
| install their apps just fine and they don't make their money by
| users paying them. Epic care because players _do_ pay them
| directly.
| MBCook wrote:
| Duh?
|
| The EU has no jurisdiction over the US. So there will be no legal
| need for Apple to allow it here. Just like they don't allow
| alternate payment methods for dating apps in the US like some
| other countries required and Apple had to comply with.
|
| The App Store is too critical to the way Apple sees things,
| they're not going to just say "oh well". I bet things are only
| open for EU residents with EU purchased phones. Buy an EU phone
| and activate with a US account? Bet it's locked.
|
| Also expect them to make hay over any security/scam issues with
| 3rd party stores/side loading. Something WILL happen and when
| reporters ask Apple they'll be more than happy to point out how
| great the App Store is suggest users stick to it and blame bad
| regulations for making EU users less safe.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > there will be no legal need for Apple to allow it here.
|
| The point is that since Apple had to do the work to allow
| sideloading at all, most if not all of the lies they came up
| with for why they can't allow it for everyone won't work
| anymore.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I don't believe they ever claimed that it was not possible.
| The position has always been that it is a compromise in
| security controls. The counter position to that has never
| been that it is not a compromise in security controls. I only
| hope they continue to sell devices that don't allow it,
| because that's what I would choose every time, unless that
| choice is taken away from me.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why do you think it's ever better to have a device that
| doesn't ever allow sideloading apps, over one that lets
| you, the owner, decide whether or not to allow sideloading
| apps?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Because these restrictions on iOS are legitimately
| valuable security controls. Apple decides what
| functionality is exposed to applications, decides who is
| allowed to publish applications, screens the applications
| they do publish, and ensures that I have the ability to
| consent to the permissions they are required to
| explicitly and in clear language request. I can safely
| install any application I want off the App Store, and
| barely put any thought into the security implications of
| doing so. The only thing I have to consider is whether I
| want to grant the publisher the permissions they're
| requesting.
|
| If Apple created a methodology for circumventing this
| process, all of a sudden it is something that I have to
| worry about, and it creates an attack surface that I'd
| rather not have to consider. It also weakens my ability
| to demand these standards from publishers. If a publisher
| has the ability to say "this app is only available
| outside the walled garden", then they may refuse to
| publish it via the system that is designed to ensure my
| interests are upheld.
|
| If the Apple curated experience happened to curtail the
| way I wished to use my device, then I would have more to
| think about. But it doesn't, I can do everything on my
| iPhone that I want to do.
|
| I do have sympathy for the developers who sometimes find
| themselves stuck in a Kafkaesque review process. But I
| consider my own interests to be much more important than
| theirs.
|
| I have very little sympathy for the businesses who object
| to the revenue model. Apple's system asserts my interests
| as a consumer above interests of business who frequently
| engage in anti-consumer behaviour. I don't care if they
| have to pay to access me as a customer, this is something
| I'm intentionally opting into as an Apple user.
|
| The only time I do object to Apple's curation, is when
| they use it in a way that I view as prioritising some
| other agenda above my interests. Such as when Apple pulls
| and app, or refuses to publish one, for reasons such as
| it containing "objectionable" content. I view this
| entirely as them subverting my interests. If that started
| to interfere with they way I wanted to use my device, I
| would start to consider an alternative. But so far it
| hasn't.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| >Because these restrictions on iOS are legitimately
| valuable security controls.
|
| Excellent. Let me, the owner of the device, choose how to
| use it. If I want it to be "less secure" that is my
| choice.
|
| >If Apple created a methodology for circumventing this
| process, all of a sudden it is something that I have to
| worry about
|
| Then do not use side-loaded app stores if you do not want
| to. Your device, your choice.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I know there won't be any convincing you, but these types
| of thoughtless comments are why sensible discussion on
| this topic doesn't happen very often. Thoughtless anit-
| Apple comments are no more insightful than thoughtless
| Apple fanboy comments.
|
| My preference is to have a device where there are no
| technical means to side load apps (as that is a security
| control), and to have a device where a publisher cannot
| attempt to force me to use a side-loaded app store. I
| explained my reasons for having those preferences, and if
| you'd like you can respond to that. But this comment
| simply ignores all of that. You say "my choice", while
| ignoring all of the reasons I provided for why these
| changes could potentially undermine my ability to choose
| entirely.
| kibwen wrote:
| The parent's comments aren't anti-Apple in the slightest.
| Please refrain from ad hominem.
|
| The logic is simple: if you don't want sideloaded apps on
| your device, don't install them. There's no argument
| against this, which is why the the endless parade of
| facile handwringing about security is so preposterous.
| jessekv wrote:
| Not GP, and fully agree that having the option for side-
| loading would be a largely positive thing for users and
| the software community.
|
| But one counterargument goes like this:
|
| When you relax the rules, larger players will be able to
| leverage them against individual users.
|
| For example, Meta would be able to release MetaStore, the
| app with exclusive distribution rights to Meta apps. Now
| you need a facebook account to install whatsapp.
|
| Not sure its sustainable, however.
| mcsniff wrote:
| Meta can currently gate WhatsApp behind logging in with a
| Facebook account, but they don't; it will alienate users
| who use it _because_ it doesn 't require a Facebook
| account
| afavour wrote:
| It's absolutely not as simple as "duh". Not giving users a
| feature they want because it's in your business interests to
| deny it is a difficult PR move, to put it mildly. Not to
| mention such a disparity in feature between different regions
| is pretty huge.
| MBCook wrote:
| > Not giving users a feature they want because it's in your
| business interests to deny it is a difficult PR move, to put
| it mildly.
|
| They've managed it for 15 years so far. It may be crumbling,
| but this isn't a new restriction or something that wasn't
| possible in the past.
| heffer wrote:
| > Not to mention such a disparity in feature between
| different regions is pretty huge.
|
| And at the same time not at all that uncommon. If you are in
| a market outside of the US I'm certain you will have
| experienced this first hand more than once. I have.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Take a look at the "Brussels effect". The only reason it
| doesn't apply in this case is that software changes are easy to
| made -- but Apple might still have to eventually let it go even
| in the US, if for example people like it enough.
| MBCook wrote:
| Right. Apple was likely to go USB-C soon on the iPhone
| anyway, but the EU rule may have pushed it up. It doesn't
| make a lot of sense to make two physical versions over the
| charge port so all iPhones are (allegedly) going USB-C.
|
| They only made things different when they absolutely had two,
| like the radios. But software featured are really easy to
| differentiate in different countries.
|
| The big risk, and I agree with you, is that this will prove
| that sideloading isn't the great evil they've been portraying
| and they'll be forced to offer it in additional places by
| more laws until it becomes easier to just give it to
| everyone.
| jug wrote:
| So only Europeans get to play Secret of Monkey Island on ScummVM?
| Well I guess I'm grateful for being a Swede but this will feel
| weird...
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Do they determine that you are in Europe by the credit card you
| attached to the App store? Seems easy to fake.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| I wonder if security code will now become region-specific too. It
| would be a terrible pity if stats go on to show EU devices got
| hacked more than their Apple Store-only equivalents right around
| the time they opened up.
|
| Not saying they would, but maybe something to watch out for.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| sad about the difference but glad to see all the EU laws won't
| necessarily _screw up the internet_ again for everyone else
| kranke155 wrote:
| The EU is bureaucratic and technocratic but it's got more hits
| than misses for me. (Am European)
| anomaly_ wrote:
| Wall Europe off and let them suffer their government regulated
| mobile phone. Anyone cheering this has a short memory.
| [deleted]
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| that's a textbook example of a punishment that in reality is a
| long awaited gift.
|
| Edit: funny that people on HN, that should be smart enough to
| know about the World, imagine that everything that it's not
| from the USA must be automatically coming from Stalin.
|
| Like no other place in the World has industries, it's either US
| products or the government making stuff.
|
| If Apple stops selling devices in Europe I will celebrate, for
| us Europeans that's the opposite of something we are worried
| about.
|
| We'll buy them from Samsung or some Chinese manufacturer, who
| cares.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| That's good and all but when can we expect such a revolutionary
| feature as listening to two apps at the same time? Or at least
| not having the Podcasts app stop because some video autoplays in
| the browser. The fact that Apple still stubbornly calls this 30%
| fee-generator pretext an "operating system", shameless. (Been
| using an iPhone only for 3-5 core apps, Phone/messaging, Camera,
| browser, Podcasts, for a decade)
| jacknews wrote:
| "It's for your safety and security"
|
| Words that should send a chill down every spine. It's obviously
| just a monopoly. They could easily have an 'allow sideloading'
| option in the OS, and those that are happy with Apple's curation
| can leave it off, and everyone else can turn it on.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Monopoly? How about digital feudalism. "We've put ourselves in
| charge of protecting you, so we're going to help ourselves to a
| portion of everyone's gold, and make sure none of the serfs are
| up to anything we don't approve of."
| kevingadd wrote:
| The way they aggressively police things on their app store,
| including "inappropriate" subversive content like Project
| Gutenberg, while taking 30% of everyone's revenue definitely
| sells the feudalism angle.
| wruza wrote:
| This is incorrect. Apple doesn't force you to buy iphone, and
| there is plenty of alternatives.
|
| Personally, I'd _like_ to take full control over my iphone.
| And create apps for myself the way I see fit. But I'm afraid
| that with sideloading allowed, most software vendors will go
| sideloading-only. That means, nobody will have any control
| over their app's privilege requests, behavior and other
| security related things.
|
| Basically my concern is that when I need a "ruler app", I
| just install it and am sure it _couldn't even be published_
| with sms access request. Now with wild-west sideloading this
| restriction is over, so everyone and their dog will nag you
| to allow access to AB, calls, mic, etc. All dark patterns
| will break loose.
| politician wrote:
| > But I'm afraid that with sideloading allowed, most
| software vendors will go sideloading-only. That means,
| nobody will have any control over their app's privilege
| requests, behavior and other security related things.
|
| There is no reason why side-loading means "not sandboxed".
| Apps still need to use Apple SDKs to interface with the OS,
| so there is still an opportunity to request permissions and
| for the user to deny permissions and for the OS to honor
| the denied permissions.
|
| Just like it works today on macOS.
| wruza wrote:
| ...and for an app to refuse to work without this
| irrelevant permission. This is my exact experience with
| an android phone and a quest of searching a ruler app.
| Ended up on lifehacker and a direct link to the app. Play
| store only suggested the most dark patterned apps in
| existence.
| malermeister wrote:
| You should give F-Droid a try. It's only open source apps
| with no shady shit. I'd love something like that to come
| to iOS as a result of this all.
|
| Case in point: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.secuso
| .privacyfriendlyru...
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.secuso.privacyfriendl
| yta...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Random website downloads on Android are as reliable as
| random website downloads on desktop platforms. Most of
| them aren't malware, but Google's search is quickly
| turning into a malware distribution network rather than a
| search engine.
|
| Here are two simple ruler apps you can reliably use:
| https://search.f-droid.org/?q=Ruler&lang=en
|
| Here are a bunch more: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Ruler&r
| h=n%3A2350149011&crid=D5EU...
|
| There are alternative app stores exactly for this reason.
| Nobody wants a future where you need to download random
| IPA files from the internet all the time, just having the
| ability to run F-Droid/Amazon App Store/Epic Games Mobile
| on your device is enough.
|
| Honestly, I don't even get why Epic hasn't made an app
| store for Android yet. Mobile appsstores aren't exactly
| rocket science.
| wruza wrote:
| The problem is I didn't know about f-droid and I believe
| that my experience in this regard is equivalent to the
| one of an average user. We simply don't know which store
| is good, if not the default.
|
| And the whole "free iphone" movement tries to go this
| route. We are basically living in a pocket between Apple
| pursuing their own goals (but thanks for explaining that
| again, someone bright here), status/rich iphone users,
| and app vendors who have to obey the rules. Why everyone
| here wants to destroy this pocket and get android-like
| situation on iphones when there already is an unlocked
| hacker-friendly f-droid or whatever is beyond me. I'm
| fucking sure that after Apple allows sideloading, most of
| these guys will say "nice, but now that it's the same,
| meh" and will not buy an iphone anyway. While everyone
| who actually cared will suffer the consequences.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's a fair assessment, but if you can't find the store
| you need, you'll probably be fine just sticking to Google
| Play, just like you would be on the app store.
|
| Android and iOS are not the same, and they never will be.
| For one thing, people bully others for having the wrong
| colour chat bubbles; there's a whole social problem
| surrounding the brand and that provides one reason why
| someone who wants to install an emulator doesn't buy an
| Android phone.
|
| There's no reason why you can't stick with Apple's app
| store if others decide they don't want to. In fact, the
| threat of competition will only drive Apple to make their
| own platform better. Just look at the way Safari has been
| improving ever since the threat of Blink coming to iOS
| became a reality.
|
| What you describe isn't an "Android-like situation". Most
| Android users don't even know they can install apps from
| the internet, just like most iOS users don't know that
| you can just sideload apps over the network already,
| albeit with some arbitrary restrictions.
| waboremo wrote:
| Yes this framing makes more sense, especially since many get
| stuck up on the definition of a monopoly when that doesn't
| quite keep up with new tactics being utilized (ie keeping
| competition going but only superficially).
| userbinator wrote:
| Every time someone justifies something as being for "security",
| the old Franklin quote comes to mind. I know this wasn't the
| context he intended, but it's certainly quite appropriate.
| vivegi wrote:
| From the article
|
| > In addition, developers may have to pay extra if they want
| their apps to be available outside of the iOS App Store, Gurman
| says.
|
| The statement is a bit ambiguous. Is it pay _Apple_ extra or pay
| extra to the _3rd party_ to have their app listed in the 3rd
| party app store?
|
| The former doesn't sound right; It is probably FUD.
|
| Logically, a 3rd party app store could compete on significantly
| reduced fees relative to Apple (as one of the strategies). Those
| conscious of the quantum of current fees then have options of
| listing their app on both the Apple app store and the 3rd party
| store as part of their distribution strategy. Customers who trust
| the Apple appstore would get their app from there and those who
| like a 3rd party app store would get it from there. The app
| developer would have reduced their total fees (for distribution).
| Even if there are signup fees, the share of revenues that Apple
| is today taking away from the developer would go down in absolute
| terms with a 3rd party store.
|
| As far as the consumer is concerned, this becomes an OS setting
| like 'default browser/default text editor etc.,'.
|
| Apple sticking to _only the Apple App Store_ stance is only
| raising the cost for consumers. Consumers in other geographies
| will also wake up. Eventually.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Even if there are signup fees, the share of revenues that
| Apple is today taking away from the developer would go down in
| absolute terms with a 3rd party store.
|
| I guarantee you Apple will find a way to still make the same
| money.
|
| Just like how in the Netherlands dating apps don't have to use
| IAP, but the apps need to pay Apple a 28% royalty on all in app
| purchases that don't go through them.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/04/apple-to-charge-27-fee-
| for...
|
| Thanks, really interesting
| thesuitonym wrote:
| If I were being extremely charitable on the phrasing, I think
| they might mean, for example, if you pay Apple 30% (or whatever
| the going rate is) you might have to pay an external app store
| an additional number.
|
| Or, it might mean Apple will charge higher rates for apps that
| are also available on other app stores? Not sure if that's
| entirely legal, but since when have pesky things like the law
| stopped companies as big as Apple?
| vivegi wrote:
| I agree. As a dev, if I list my $3/mo subscription app on the
| Apple App store and they take 30% and I have 100k customers
| and I double-list the app in the 3rd party store + the Apple
| app store and gain 20k customers from the 3rd party store and
| the 3rd party store charges 10%, I have saved (30% - 10%) x
| 20k x $3/mo = $12k/mo on the new customers.
|
| If I release my next version update and post it to just the
| 3rd party app store, I could then theoretically move the 120k
| customers to download the update from the 3rd party store and
| then save $72k/mo.
|
| That is what Apple is afraid of. I think.
| xlii wrote:
| I don't think that's a problem for Apple:
|
| - For figurative developer moving 120k customers saves
| $72k/mo
|
| - For figurative customers on $3/mo subscription it means
| ~$0.65/mo savings
|
| - Such scenario doesn't take into account amount of work
| required for switch (5 minutes of form filling on $15/h is
| $2.5 - gain starts at 6th month)
|
| - Neither it does UX around subscription management (right
| now it's very comfortable to manage Apple's subscriptions)
|
| As a counter, anecdotal, point - I, myself, pay >$5/mo
| overhead on subscriptions and I'm completely aware that I
| can save money. My reasons:
|
| - I'm too lazy to set up full account on provider's website
|
| - Apple is VERY verbose about subscriptions, even if I
| forget about one, they e-mail me about it
|
| - It easy to manage all my subscriptions and thus I only
| have subscription for things I use
| vivegi wrote:
| Just extending the hypothetical, the developer can drop
| the price to $2.49/mo passing on the savings to customers
| and perhaps capture a few more customers at that price
| point.
|
| While it is true that inertia might stop many customers
| from changing the default, it does give an additional
| degree of freedom for devs.
|
| Also, in price conscious geographies like India (where
| Apple just launched their first two retail stores this
| past week), we have alternate payment mechanisms like UPI
| (Unified Payment Interface) that are zero cost. So, why
| should a dev be forced to use only the payment mechanisms
| offered by Apple?
| counttheforks wrote:
| And? Sounds perfectly legal to do, and something that
| should 100% be possible.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > In addition, developers may have to pay extra if they want
| their apps to be available outside of the iOS App Store, Gurman
| says.
|
| How I read this is that they are basically creating a 3rd
| category of apps. Up until now you _could_ sideload apps on an
| iPhone via an enterprise cert (though it carries some major
| restrictions that would make it unsuitable for general
| distribution). With this they are likely creating something
| like that enterprise cert but for all app developers.
| xenonite wrote:
| No, my interpretation is that Apple either increases their fees
| or decreases prices for an app that is also distributed
| elsewhere.
|
| I don't see a problem with that.
|
| If a producer grants exclusive distribution rights to a seller,
| the typical consequence is that the seller gives the producer a
| greater profit share in return.
|
| On ending those terms, the seller may rightfully reduce the
| profit share, in my opinion.
| mijamo wrote:
| A distributor cannot strong arm producers into exclusivity
| contracts while in a dominant position, this is text book
| example on how to get fined heavily in most countries, and
| would not fly at all in Europe.
| xenonite wrote:
| I don't think this is "strong armed" because then
| developers can freely choose which app store they sell to.
| ko27 wrote:
| The problem is that EU law requires Apple to not restrict
| sideloading for selected apps. It doesn't matter if they pay
| or don't pay Apple. You have to be able to sideload them.
| xenonite wrote:
| There's a misunderstanding: I meant that Apple may increase
| the fees in their own store for non-exclusive apps.
| vivegi wrote:
| > ... Apple either increases their fees or decreases prices
| for an app that is also distributed elsewhere
|
| I don't get why anyone should be paying Apple a rent for
| using a 3rd party app store (lets say exclusively).
|
| As a hypothetical, lets say Epic Games or Steam launches an
| Alt App Store for games that can be installed on ios. Why
| does any gamedev using those stores have to pay Apple any
| transaction fee?
|
| Just doesn't make any sense and would just be rent-seeking on
| Apple's part.
| xenonite wrote:
| I don't think developers should be paying a rent for using
| a third-party App Store. I meant it like that: if a
| developer wants to sell both in a third-party store and in
| the Apple apps store then Apple is not sole distributor.
| Losing exclusive selling rights, Apple has every right to
| cash in a higher fee.
| vivegi wrote:
| Apple can charge whatever fee they want, provided they
| also allow alt app stores to operate and set their own
| fees and let the market decide whether they will download
| the widget from their App store or the 3rd party store.
|
| Putting up anticompetitive defenses for the app store in
| the garb of security, censorship etc., while hamstringing
| alternatives for app installation -- It is a matter of
| time before the antitrust (or equivalent) units of
| different governments come after Apple.
|
| For reference, Competition Commission of India penalized
| Google INR 1337 crores (INR 13,370,000,000 ~ $161M USD)
| for abusing its dominant position. [1]
|
| From that link:
|
| > For this purpose, the CCI delineated following five
| relevant markets in the present matter:
|
| > - Market for licensable OS for smart mobile devices in
| India
|
| > - Market for app store for Android smart mobile OS in
| India
|
| > - Market for general web search services in India
|
| > - Market for non-OS specific mobile web browsers in
| India
|
| > - Market for online video hosting platform (OVHP) in
| India.
|
| The second bullet point is pertinent for Apple's current
| behavior relating to App Stores.
|
| Apple's market share in India is miniscule. But they have
| just opened up Apple retail in India this week with
| stores in Mumbai and Delhi. So, with local customers
| increasing in the next couple of years, this will be
| something Apple has to contend with.
|
| [1]: https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=
| 1869748
| seydor wrote:
| Sideloading should be mandatory and opt-in. Arguing that it
| should be closed is basically people wanting to control other
| people's computers (even though that is a popular opinion in this
| "hacker" forum).
|
| It's going to be interesting when some sideloaded app starts
| becoming popular and e.g. americans miss out on it. I can already
| imagine a lot of AI and nsfw stuff in that category
| walterbell wrote:
| Option 1: one-time cost for EU compliance, applied uniformly in
| other countries without geo-specific overhead, reducing ecosystem
| pressure for additional litigation and regulation.
|
| Option 2: minimal EU-only compliance, generate A/B economic data
| for antitrust lawyers and regulators in other countries to
| compete on platform neutrality, which can be incorporated by EU
| in a spiral of regulatory FOMO.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Since Option 1. require them to look further than the next 1 or
| 2 years it'll absolutely be Option 2 I think.
| leoh wrote:
| Superior functionality exclusively in the EU -- USB-C, side-
| loading -- is a good thing. It will remind US folks that the law
| is a powerful mechanism for making simple, non-controversial
| changes that improve everyone's quality of life; but which
| corporations would otherwise refuse to accept. BTW -- LAAS
| (lobbying-as-a-service) should probably exist.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Let's suppose you're right that USB-C and side-loading are
| "superior functionality". There must be some value to that
| superior functionality; consumers should be willing to pay
| extra for it if they value it. It seems logically like Apple
| ought to offer a USB-C iPhone if there is enough demand for it
| to generate more profit, except that it lowers the cost for
| customers to switch phones, which likely costs them more than
| they'd make in additional profit by having a USB-C version.
| This puts their interests at odds with the customer's
| interests. There are a lot of other similar situations, e.g.
| most people would rather have cars that last longer, not have
| to deal with advertising, farmers want repairable equipment,
| etc., but the economics don't work out well for the company.
| How does a market economy rectify that?
|
| I'd argue that in theory, new upstarts ought to be able to
| enter the market and satisfy the demand if it exists. However,
| in many fields, there are substantial barriers to entry that
| prevent this. For instance, in the auto industry, it takes huge
| amounts of capital to reach the necessary scale, gain enough
| experience and reputation, etc., to be able to compete with
| existing companies. Similarly, it would be a monumental
| engineering effort to produce "iPhone with USB-C" due to the
| amount of intellectual property, goodwill, Silicon deals,
| integrations, etc., that Apple provides. It would be
| impossible, really, due to iMessage and FaceTime being
| proprietary. There could be new cable providers that don't run
| ads, but they wouldn't be able to compete on cost, and they
| would have trouble dealing with the regulatory environment for
| infrastructure, striking deals with networks, etc.
|
| Banning companies from engaging in practices that benefit them
| once they become sufficiently adversarial to consumers isn't a
| scalable solution. There are many instances of this across many
| industries; regulating them all would be like playing Whack-A-
| Mike. It also provides no recourse to the group of market
| participants who don't care if their phone has Lightning or
| USB-C, and probably prefer Lightning since they already have a
| charger. It also leaves less room for innovation since
| companies will have to comply with standards, possibly
| preventing superior technology from being developed (that's how
| we got Lightning to begin with).
|
| I'd love to hear other/better solutions. I'll throw one
| idea/observation out myself. A lot of these misalignments are
| because providing a better consumer experience today reduces
| the likelihood they will be a customer tomorrow. Either they
| will leverage the lower switching cost to switch, or they will
| be more loyal but purchase less in the future due to the
| increased quality. What's a way to manipulate company economics
| to favor shorter-term views of the company, and disregard
| higher-growth plans? Higher interest rates. Maybe a higher
| interest rate environment could mitigate some of these issues
| by ensuring companies care about the business they have today,
| more than the one that they could have tomorrow.
| rychco wrote:
| Regulatory capture is so pervasive in the US that I'm afraid
| there's little chance that the law will ever change to benefit
| consumers in a meaningful way.
| [deleted]
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I do not see USB-C coming. Apple will rather remove the jack
| altogether and go full Qi (and make the device 100$ more
| expensive because wireless loading adapter).
| hailwren wrote:
| But they're also stuck with physical sims because of those same
| laws. I vastly prefer the esim in the US iphone to the tray.
| j-krieger wrote:
| I googled but I couldn't find anything about this. Source?
| Sayrus wrote:
| eSIM is available in France [1] on many brands and devices,
| including iPhones.
|
| [1] https://assistance.orange.fr/objets-connectes/installer-
| et-u...
| golergka wrote:
| I've travelled across Europe with eSims bought from
| Mobimatter, and I've also bought local Vodaphone eSim in
| Italy and some other operator Montenegro. In fact, I'm
| writing this from a eSim in my iphone while I wait for Airbnb
| to resolve issues with check-in on Cyprus. What are you
| talking about?
| hailwren wrote:
| oh, maybe you have both? US iphones don't have sim trays.
| Euro iphones do.
| dagorenouf wrote:
| Usb-c sounds cool for now. But what about when a new port comes
| out and Apple can't use it because the EU still mandates to use
| the old one?
| herbstein wrote:
| You mean like when everyone moved from mini-USB to USB-C?
| It's also good to remember that lightning connectors are USB2
| in a different form factor - outdated and slow.
| candiodari wrote:
| Oh you're giving lightning connectors too little credit.
| They also come with a LOT of logic to prevent people from
| charging their Apple devices with unapproved chargers. All
| added on top of USB 2 (and definitely _against_ the
| standard, one might add)
|
| Like a lot of Apple and huge company stuff in general, it's
| a flimsy reason to change something _and_ introduce many
| limitations the huge company thinks will make them more
| money. It sure as hell is not about reversible connectors.
| evilduck wrote:
| What? I've plugged lightning cables into pretty much any
| imaginable sort of USB-A socket over than last decade and
| have never encountered one that wouldn't supply a charge
| specifically to a lightning cable. Please, be specific
| with what limitations you're referring to because this is
| counter to all evidence I've ever been witness to.
| candiodari wrote:
| They supply _a_ charge fine, but no standards-based fast
| charging.
| evilduck wrote:
| Oh, so you're moving the goal posts to avoid discussing
| your lie. Got it.
|
| But please, reference a USB2 or USB3 standard over a type
| A connection that enables fast charging too. This will be
| fun.
| illiarian wrote:
| What you mean to say is: USB Power Delivery as a standard
| didn't even appear until after Lightning was launched.
| Any fast charging didn't appear until USB-C specs that
| only became finalized in 2014.
|
| And Lightning has been charging my iPhones pretty fast
| dahfizz wrote:
| There wasn't a law mandating the use of the old micro-B
| port. The EU issued a memorandum asking companies nicely to
| use micro-B, but obviously it wasn't enforced (Apple never
| complied).
|
| This situation is different. Apple and others are
| completely unable to upgrade to USB-D when it comes around.
| crote wrote:
| No, they are not. They will be able to use USB-D in
| parallel with USB-C until USB-D becomes industry
| standard, at which point it will be adopted by the EU as
| the new mandatory standard port.
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| They add another common standard, probably allowing
| manufacturers to choose between "old" and "new" for a little
| while.
|
| Similar to the switch from microUSB-B to USB-C. Budget phones
| kept using the cheap option for awhile, but eventually costs
| came down and people settled into the new standard.
|
| Not sure how it's done in the EU, but their legislature could
| delegate authority to make such decisions to an executive
| agency if the process of passing an amendment or new law is
| too slow.
| roblabla wrote:
| > Not sure how it's done in the EU
|
| That's how it's done, is my understanding. The actual
| articles of the "usb-c" law[0] doesn't even mention usb-c.
| Here's what Article 1 states:
|
| > With respect to radio equipment capable of being
| recharged by means of wired charging, the Commission is
| empowered to adopt delegated acts [...] in order to ensure
| a minimum common interoperability between radio equipment
| and its charging devices, as well as to improve consumer
| convenience, to reduce environmental waste and to avoid
| market fragmentation, by:
|
| > (a) modifying, adding or removing categories or classes
| of radio equipment;
|
| > (b) modifying, adding or removing technical
| specifications, including references and descriptions, in
| relation to the charging receptacle(s) and charging
| communication protocol(s), for each category or class of
| radio equipment concerned.
|
| > [...]
|
| > The Commission shall submit a report on the assessment
| referred to in the third subparagraph to the European
| Parliament and to the Council, for the first time by 28
| December 2025 and every 5 years thereafter, and shall adopt
| delegated acts pursuant to the second subparagraph, point
| (a), accordingly.
|
| So the Commission (which is part of Europe's executive
| branch) can enact delegated acts to add new technical
| specifications for wired charging. USB-C is not "hardcoded
| in law". What's hardcoded in law is the Commission's
| authority to mandate the use of certain ports.
|
| [0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
| DannyBee wrote:
| Ah yes, that magic new port that dose something we can't do,
| but nobody can pinpoint what it is or why we need it.
|
| It's been a decade since a new port (lightning was 2012,
| usb-c is 2014). So apparently, they are doing pretty well!
|
| I think my answer here would "enjoy the next decade of
| benefits and worry about it then?"
| mig39 wrote:
| When this was first proposed in the EU, the connected they
| wanted to mandate was the "standard" at the time. USB
| Mini-B. Which is now deprecated and a few generations
| behind.
|
| And the same arguments were made at the time. "Stifle
| innovation" and "what innovation, this connector is
| perfect. No need for improvement."
| iSnow wrote:
| Well, obviously the EU authorities aren't as ass-
| backwards as people claim if they switched from mini-USB
| to USB-C, are they? So why would they be less flexible if
| USB-SuperNexGen comes out?
| ok_dad wrote:
| > When this was first proposed
|
| Well, it's a good thing they UPDATED the bill that
| eventually became law, right? I guess they could probably
| do that again, if necessary!
| brokenkebaby wrote:
| They technically can, but making such update is not like
| making a correction in google docs, it easyly can take
| years. And as always in politics there will be some well-
| established players interested in keeping outdated
| standard in place.
|
| I like USB-C way more, and frankly don't like Apple that
| much at all, but let's not pretend lawfare doesn't have
| collateral damage.
| ok_dad wrote:
| In everything in life, there are trade-offs between
| different solutions. Personally, I like having just one
| connector for chargers even if it takes a few extra years
| to update. I don't think it will, someone else in this
| thread mentioned the actual connectors aren't in the law
| but rather a description of a process that the standards
| org has to perform when updating the approved
| connector(s) list.
| brokenkebaby wrote:
| I do like the same thing. That's why I don't buy Apple
| things for personal use, and it doesn't even feel like a
| trade-off. I may agree with using blunt and stupidly
| heavy weapon which is gov't (in this case supragov't)
| against power of some monopoly. However, charger doesn't
| look like that case at all. I think it was picked simply
| because it makes a nice populist move, and not because it
| has significant impact on a significant number of
| customers.
| mantas wrote:
| How long it took to pass it and how long it will take to
| update it? Meanwhile when a better port comes up,
| manufacturers will stay away from it because of this
| limitation.
| eecc wrote:
| Except that's exactly what Lightning was in the world of
| (mini, micro, nano) USB2. Try again
| nickpp wrote:
| USB-C itself was that "magic" new port 10 years ago. EU at
| the time was recommending standardization on the
| abomination that was micro-USB. Luckily they didn't make
| alternatives illegal, like now, or you'd never have seen
| your much beloved USB-C.
| j-krieger wrote:
| Instead of mandating the standard to be used, they
| should've mandated that phone vendors agree on one
| standard, with a revision every x years or so.
| crote wrote:
| Luckily, that is _exactly_ what happened! The law
| explicitly states that it will be reviewed every few
| years to determine whether USB-C is still the best
| choice.
| nickpp wrote:
| And why would a better choice _magically_ appear though
| when it's illegal to put it on the market to let it prove
| itself? Why would anybody who is actually innovative pay
| to research and risk such a better choice in the first
| place? To wait for its review in a few years?!
| wiseowise wrote:
| The issue with lightning is not that it is old, but because
| it is available only on Apple devices.
| leoh wrote:
| Good point. Laws are immutable and can never be changed.
| least wrote:
| It doesn't really matter if laws can or can't be changed,
| the question is whether or not regulations imposing a
| standard on manufacturers on what kind of connector they
| put on their phone should exist at all.
| johndisko wrote:
| Here's a crazy idea. USB-C can coexist with the new port
| until the new port proves its worth standardizing to the same
| degree (as USB-C).
|
| But somehow we have decided that small computers (aka phones)
| must only have 1 port.
| illiarian wrote:
| > But somehow we have decided that small computers (aka
| phones) must only have 1 port.
|
| Because, you guessed it, they are small. And any port you
| add requires a not insignificant amount of space
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Then industry players would build consensus around a new
| standard and adopt that into law? Would you prefer a world
| where browser vendors are all designing their own HTML and JS
| features independently rather than working off a common spec
| too?
|
| At a certain scale of adoption/societal impact, having a
| common set of agreed standards is much more important than
| fragmented "innovation". I would argue having a general and
| common way to charge devices qualifies for that level of
| importance. The incentive on Apple's side to stay off of
| USB-C can only be one of profit driven customer hostile
| design... as there's really zero technical or otherwise
| reason to have stayed on lightning this long.
|
| One of the biggest annoyances in my daily life is having to
| swap back and forth between USB-C and lightning cables. These
| lightning cables being sold today are effectively trash to be
| thrown away in a year or two. Completely unnecessary, and
| hard to have any respect for the intelligence of people who
| defend it. There is no slippery slope here. If Apple wants to
| build a next gen port, then they do it alongside other
| industry players rather than monopolizing the technology so
| they can charge 10x markup on cables/accessories/licensing...
| which imparts zero benefit to the consumer.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| There will never be another one. Who would put R&D into
| something the EU might not approve?
| layer8 wrote:
| USB-C is only mandatory for specific classes of devices.
| Presumably, if some new technology would have a good chance
| to provide a substantial improvement, it would also make
| sense to develop it for other devices. In addition, it's
| possible to develop compatible extensions to USB-C, meaning
| technical progress isn't "frozen" at the current USB-C
| version.
| iSnow wrote:
| The next one is actually already on the horizon and it's
| called Qi2
| est31 wrote:
| The EU is at the side of the customers as long as the companies
| making the product are not in the EU. Had the EU a strong phone
| manufacturer industry that didn't use USB-C, we still wouldn't
| have that requirement. Companies always maintain closest
| lobbying ties to the governments they reside in (at least if
| both economies are equally developed), and countries care less
| about companies that don't give many jobs to their residents or
| taxation revenue.
| iSnow wrote:
| I would like to see some solid proof on this, as I don't buy
| this claim.
|
| The EU has squeezed telcoms on roaming charges which created
| a lot of howling. The EU also has rather strict regulation
| concerning gas use of cars, ICE emissions and so on, probably
| second only to California. The EU approach to food and pharma
| security is fundamentally different to that of the USA, and
| it impacts EU companies. Regulations around green GMOs are so
| strict they basically killed the European market for GMOs.
| tough wrote:
| Just look at how german banks or car manufacturers are
| treated in EU
| dfee wrote:
| Here you are: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-
| takes-the-eu-hostage...
| iSnow wrote:
| That is hardly the fault of the EU, but one member state.
| Everyone points to the evil bureaucratic EU, but in
| reality, member states frequently get in the way of the
| EU to protect their industry.
|
| In both cases, Germany had to accept rules they would
| have never accepted if they were outside of the EU - even
| if they sadly were able to soften them up.
| tough wrote:
| Well it would make sense that the problem is precisely
| that some state members have an outweighted power
| distribution for calling the shots.
|
| Like yeah, Germany likes to keep the EU as a consumer of
| their shit, basically.
|
| France likes to play along 2nd I guess
| est31 wrote:
| The same is happening with other countries and other
| sectors. Say how strong the farming sector is in France.
| tough wrote:
| McDonalds vs French Farmers
| Agingcoder wrote:
| And don't forget GDPR
| roguas wrote:
| Show me example of a thing that would prove it. EU has tons
| of regulation on cars(most of manufacturers are EU based) -
| ask any car manufacturer how easy it is to get a car sold in
| EU(not saying that tons of regulation is good or that
| difficulty of producing is good, but it is an example that
| goes well against your argument).
| sunshinerag wrote:
| Superior Functionality? That is subjective POV.
| atyppo wrote:
| I think you greatly overestimate the importance the average
| American assigns to "superior functionality" on an iPhone. As
| important as it is to you or me, the average person doesn't
| know or care why they should have these features.
| illiarian wrote:
| I'm a programmer with 22 years of experience, and a member on
| HN... and even I don't care :)
| mantas wrote:
| Side-loading may bite back in nasty ways. Tiny but locally
| required apps may use it to work around legit limitations. Pay-
| for-parking apps, shop loyalty systems etc. Yay for more
| spyware and api exploiting.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Apple's exclusivity on allowing and deciding what goes on the
| AppStore and on the iOS was their way of controlling the user
| experience and their way to ensure future sales of iPhones. They
| didn't want that iOS, AppStore and iPhones get flooded with low
| quality apps. Similar way of thinking that I know of was Valve
| and Steam, where Steam users needed to Greenlit a game before it
| came to the Steam store. Imo Steam had a better approach because
| it was community based not exclusive like Apple had and has. The
| story of Jobs' and Apple's skyhigh care for privacy and security
| was more of a propaganda and a marketing strategy than a true
| care for users' safety.
| mikenew wrote:
| The major difference is that I can install whatever the hell I
| want on my own PC (including my Steam Deck!). Apple has an
| exclusive store _and_ an exclusive device.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I never used an iPhone and I don't really know how horrible
| it is but if people are annoyed with iOS and iPhone, they can
| always use Android devices. Android devices are on a par with
| iPhones unlike 10 years ago.
| layer8 wrote:
| > They didn't want that iOS, AppStore and iPhones get flooded
| with low quality apps.
|
| Well, they failed in that.
| ikurei wrote:
| > Similar way of thinking that I know of was Valve and Steam,
| where Steam users needed to Greenlit a game before it came to
| the Steam store.
|
| Not the same at all. You can install whatever you want on the
| Steam Deck.
|
| I'd fine with Apple just curating their App Store; I am not
| fine with them deciding what software I can run on "my" device.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I meant Valve didn't want Steam to be flooded with low
| quality games (back in the day) which would interest nobody
| and would only turn away people from Steam.
|
| >I'd fine with Apple just curating their App Store; I am not
| fine with them deciding what software I can run on "my"
| device.
|
| Yea that's horrible, that's why Microsoft and Windows are
| great when speaking about PC industry and comparing it to the
| iOS and iPhones.
|
| I personally only use Android for the same reason why I only
| use Windows and that is Android and Windows are open
| operating systems and I can install whatever I want.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| I think Apple has also done good things with their strict app
| store policies (from my consumer point of view).
|
| Apple has been for example putting limits on data collection and
| tracking. The main mechanism is to kick apps out from Apps store
| if they don't play by the rules.
|
| I'm worried that side loading will be a step back here. Strong
| players, like Facebook, may just take their app away from the
| official store and distribute it through other ways. With their
| strong position I don't have much choice - it's not like there
| would be five competing apps serving the same purpose (connecting
| to the people and communities on Facebook).
| DuckFeathers wrote:
| > I think Apple has also done good things with their strict app
| store policies
|
| Apple could have hidden the settings to enable it behind two
| levels of menu settings and anyone like you would never get to
| it. The only reason they have "strict" policies, as has been
| shown over and over again, is for their commercial benefit.
|
| > Apple has been for example putting limits on data collection
| and tracking.
|
| I want to be tracked by apps, because it leads to better ads
| for products that I am actually looking for (than some random
| garbage that I don't care about)... and better usability in
| general. Apple put those rules in place so that their ad
| business has the edge over competitors. If Apple was running in
| a country that was not corrupt, this would be seen as anti-
| competitive and they would be sued.
|
| > Strong players, like Facebook, may just take their app away
| from the official store and distribute it through other ways.
|
| And? If you want clear rules on tracking, go talk to your
| politician. Apple is blocking competitors from tracking users
| while it has access to all of users data and uses it for their
| $5 billion revenue business.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Obvious astroturfing.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Strong players, like Facebook, may just take their app away
| from the official store and distribute it through other ways.
| With their strong position I don't have much choice - it's not
| like there would be five competing apps serving the same
| purpose (connecting to the people and communities on Facebook).
|
| iPhone is THE hottest device on the planet, I can't believe
| anyone can seriously consider Facebook challenging its
| position.
| snemvalts wrote:
| Apple's security and data collection argument for their walled
| garden is null and void.
|
| https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2023/02/27/beware-rogue-2fa...
|
| They don't look at API calls made by the apps. How can they be
| your sure of the security then?
|
| Only after this was published were the apps removed.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Every jailbreak ever has been on the magical secure "app
| store", too. It is really weird that people on here of all
| places believe in this garbage performative "app phrenology"
| they are doing over there.
| walls wrote:
| Every iOS jailbreak I've ever seen has been web or desktop
| based.
| ntauthority wrote:
| > I don't have much choice - it's not like there would be five
| competing apps serving the same purpose (connecting to the
| people and communities on Facebook).
|
| The same legislation that is requiring Apple to allow
| sideloading also requires other large players (like Meta) to
| open their communication platforms up to other service or
| application developers.
|
| In this hypothetical case, there actually would be five
| competing apps, some even still distributed on the App Store.
| xorcist wrote:
| > putting limits on data collection and tracking
|
| You know who's really putting limits on data collecting?
| F-Droid.
|
| If that's _actually_ your argument, that 's what you should
| use. It's quite practical.
|
| > Strong players, like Facebook, may just take their app away
| from the official
|
| That argument really has to explain why this has not happened
| on every other operating system under the sun, including
| Android. They all suffer pretty strong monopolistic network
| effects.
| Spivak wrote:
| Because the Play Store lets Facebook have the data they want,
| this isn't that hard.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-
| priv...
| heywoodlh wrote:
| > I don't have much choice
|
| I hope I don't come across as snarky -- I am genuinely curious
| -- but why don't you have a choice? Are you unable to contact
| friends, family, etc. any other way outside of FB? The phrasing
| seems so strong, I am second guessing if I am just
| privileged/lucky (location, friend/family circumstances, etc?)
| to be off of social media but still have friends and family
| that I stay connected to.
|
| EDIT: fixed grammar
| YeBanKo wrote:
| Here is an example: we are invited to my kid's friend's
| birthday. They manage the event on facebook. They had to
| change location and time couple of times already. We don't
| want to miss it and alternatives to facebook just aren't any
| better. Sometimes it's just convenient.
| ivlad wrote:
| Calendar invites are cross-platform and reasonably
| convenient. You don't even need to subscribe to someone's
| calendar, updates are vCalendar files sent over email. At
| least iOS and Outlook parse your inbox for vCalendar files
| and may update the accepted event automatically.
| [deleted]
| jb1991 wrote:
| I would normally agree with you, but a friend of mine is an
| immigrant from a south east Asian nation and the only way to
| easily communicate is through Facebook with the family there.
| It's like saying, sure we can take away your phone and you
| can still write letters, but at some point communication is
| also about convenience.
| heywoodlh wrote:
| That makes perfect sense, definitely sheds light on the
| fortunate circumstance I am in of not needing FB to
| _conveniently_ communicate with my connections. Because, I
| agree, you should be able to conveniently communicate if
| you can.
| pjerem wrote:
| Can't this friend install something else on his phone ?
| Signal maybe ?
| zamnos wrote:
| Cool. Does signal allow you to register without a phone
| number yet? Data-only plans with no phone number attached
| are quite common in some countries.
| guilamu wrote:
| Not yet, no.
| Hacksawed wrote:
| By providing Signal with any phone number at which you
| can receive an SMS or text message, you can register a
| Signal account at that other phone number. For example,
| you can create a pseudonymous Google account, register a
| Google Voice VoIP number, and use that as your Signal
| number. Or you can even use a free throw-away SMS account
| and use that number when you sign up for your Signal
| account instead of your real phone number. The Signal
| service will happily send the throw-away number a text
| message with the verification code, letting you complete
| the account sign-up process.
| rendx wrote:
| Registration also works for numbers that can receive
| _calls_ but not SMS. Like any landline you (even
| temporarily) have access to.
| zamnos wrote:
| Does that work if some else has used that phone number to
| register an account already?
| zamnos wrote:
| Orrrrr Signal could just fix their shit. Requiring phone
| numbers for this long is borderline suspicious.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Telegram allows you to register without a phone number,
| as of recently.
| gavinsyancey wrote:
| He'd then have to convince everyone else he wants to talk
| to to use Signal instead of Facebook. That's the hard
| part.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Install both? Migrate one friend at a time, starting at
| the ones you speak with most.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| But then in this hypothetical scenario you've side loaded
| Facebook and it's doing who knows what on your phone.
| willis936 wrote:
| I was under the impression that Signal was widely popular
| in SE Asia.
| zztop44 wrote:
| Unfortunately, you were mistaken.
| pjerem wrote:
| It's not as hard as what people think.
|
| You just tell your friends that you are not reachable on
| Facebook anymore and how you can be reached.
|
| You don't have to "convince" anyone.
|
| Your real fear is that people will stop reaching you if
| they don't want to install another app, send you an SMS,
| send you an email or to call you on the phone.
|
| Well, if your friends stops reaching you because you
| uninstalled an app, honestly it looks that they are more
| acquaintances than real friends. And it's ok. But it's
| also ok if they are just an entry in your contacts list.
| jb1991 wrote:
| You're making an awful lot of assumptions about how
| people think and behave en masse. When facebook is the
| primary communication factor for huge family groups, if
| you're the only one not participating then you miss out
| on all those conversations. It's not just about one on
| one communication, it's about a virtual family presence.
|
| I say this as someone who despises facebook but this is
| the reality we are in. Similarly, in most nations outside
| United States, you really cannot get rid of WhatsApp. If
| you don't use WhatsApp, you are missing out on how much
| of your society operates.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| It's not about being reachable in a 1-1 chat. It's about
| being excluded from group chats which are very important
| for keeping up the group and friendship in general. For
| example, if I deleted FB Messenger right now I would
| still get invited to the occasional event but there would
| be way fewer "yo, I'm at X, is anyone free to hang out?"
| type messages that I will see, or invitations from
| acquaintances in big group chats, or the current shitpost
| of the week that will become part of everyone's lexicon
| for the next 2 months other than yours, etc. For a lot of
| people (including me) such communication is a majority of
| their overall communication with their friends and
| breaking them does break a big part of their life.
| Derbasti wrote:
| Looking at Android, where sideloading has been available
| forever, there doesn't seem any evidence of your worry.
| Joeri wrote:
| Apple will make it annoying enough to sideload that no
| meaningful amount of users will do it, causing it to be
| largely irrelevant.
|
| It's only worth it to app makers to have side loading if they
| can do it for large numbers of users, bypass the app store's
| rules, and bypass apple's take. I'm expecting apple to set it
| up in a way they can do none of those things, by making it
| cumbersome to sideload, not giving entitlements to apps not
| published through the store, and by taking a cut for sales
| from sideloaded apps.
| rimliu wrote:
| It is already annoying enough without Apple needing to do
| anything.
| ivlad wrote:
| Recent example: https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-
| suspends-chinas-pi... Malicious app in alternative store, the
| one in Google Play is different.
| Derbasti wrote:
| That's exactly the point, though: side loading is not
| something to worry about, since normal users won't and
| shouldn't care about it at all. It is not a threat to the
| Apple App Store.
|
| But it does allow for niche applications such as NewPipe
| and F-Droid, for technical users who know the risks.
| cageface wrote:
| Defenders of Apple's policies always say you can just use other
| tech if you don't agree with them. The same principle applies
| here. If an app requires you to use a third party app store and
| you don't like it then choose another app.
|
| If you feel _compelled_ to use a product with policies you don
| 't agree with then now you understand how many of us feel about
| iOS.
| Spivak wrote:
| But there's no push, you can literally ignore Apple's
| existence and use none of their products and you'll have no
| care in the world. Apple's network effect is basically zero.
| There's always one Android user in the friend group that
| spoils iMessage and FaceTime so we have to use something else
| anyway.
|
| If you mean you feel compelled to _sell_ in their store which
| requires a laptop, a business relationship with Apple, and
| realistically a phone because emulator only sucks then that
| 's a business decision if the juice is worth the squeeze.
| cageface wrote:
| No business with a mobile component can afford to ignore
| iOS.
|
| And a lot of apps launch early on iOS or have better
| features on iOS or never even launch at all on Android.
| Less so these days but it's still a thing. I was just in
| Japan and you can use an iPhone to pay for mass transit but
| not a non Japanese Android phone, just as one recent
| example.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >Apple's network effect is basically zero.
|
| >There's always one Android user in the friend group that
| spoils iMessage and FaceTime
| Spivak wrote:
| Yes. That's literally my point. It's really hard for
| Apple to establish a network effect when any group above
| a certain size can't use iMessage or FaceTime and have to
| use a 3rd party app like Discord, Snap, or Messenger.
|
| You can't be the "everyone else is one it" social network
| when every Apple user uses a 3rd party messenger and
| video chat app for at least one person. That app ends up
| being the winner.
| [deleted]
| m463 wrote:
| This is naive. Apple doesn't protect you.
|
| The prime example is that apple gives apps unfettered access to
| network connections. And YOU are unable to block this in any
| meaningful way.
|
| What apple doesn't give you is the ability to manage your own
| phone. You cannot really manage what apps are doing yourself.
| You cannot even find out what apps are doing. And you
| definitely will not be able to manage apple apps, they get a
| free pass in all ways.
|
| But yes, if there's a sideloaded facebook app, or a facebook
| store, you will be given more rope to do with as you want.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _You cannot even find out what apps are doing._
|
| Wrong. You CAN find out what apps are doing: Settings -
| Privacy - App Privacy Report
|
| > _And you definitely will not be able to manage apple apps,
| they get a free pass in all ways._
|
| You can outright delete most Apple apps.
|
| > _Apple doesn 't protect you._
|
| said the wolf about the fence.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > The prime example is that apple gives apps unfettered
| access to network connections. (...) You cannot even find out
| what apps are doing.
|
| Settings -> Privacy & Security -> App Privacy Report
|
| It shows you per application what data they are accessing,
| which sensors they are accessing and which domains the app is
| contacting. It also reports when they were doing this and how
| often. You can even export this data as a JSON file.
| m463 wrote:
| nicehost.benigndomain.com IN CNAME creepy.domain.biz
|
| (or other similar techniques)
| cryotopippto wrote:
| Only took them iOS 15.2 for this.
| Razengan wrote:
| How long did it take for Android to have finely grained
| permissions?
| vetinari wrote:
| Since start. Originally, they were too fine-grained
| though.
| Razengan wrote:
| https://www.howtogeek.com/177711/ios-has-app-permissions-
| too... (2013)
|
| https://source.android.com/docs/core/permissions/runtime_
| per...
|
| Man the amount of false shit that gets thrown around by
| these Android vs iOS mobs, usually by people who don't
| even know their own side.
| vetinari wrote:
| I don't understand your comment.
|
| The original poster asked about _fine-grained
| permissions_. Not about _runtime permissions_. Details
| matter.
|
| Android did have very fine-grained permissions since
| first betas. Yes, they were install-time - a policy was
| generated at install time by the system, and the app
| itself was unable to change anything about it.
| Technically, it was a nice system, but users didn't
| understand that, they were asking for simplified model
| from iOS, so they got it in Android's 6.0 _runtime
| permissions_.
|
| In the end, neither of these system (or: original Android
| did have it, but the simplified 6.0+ doesn't) has the
| most important permission: can an app talk to the
| network?
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > Android did have very fine-grained permissions since
| first betas. Yes, they were install-time
|
| They weren't really that fine-grained from a user
| perspective. You could not accept/refuse individual
| permissions, you either accepted everything or simply not
| install the app.
|
| iOS always had fine-grained permission in that you could
| grant/refuse individual permissions. For example: you
| could allow an app to access the camera but refuse
| location services. Android only recently gained that
| capability.
|
| Even more important, iOS always put the permission
| request in context. If I install an app and it asks for a
| ton of permissions I have no idea why it needs them and
| if it makes sense for that app to have them. Why would a
| chat client need access to my photos ? But on iOS, I get
| that request the first time I choose to send a photo to
| someone. I immediately see by the context why it needs
| that permission and I can make an informed decision.
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| That's moving the goalpost though
| eviks wrote:
| Why did you move them to only include a subset of
| devices?
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| what?
| Nition wrote:
| Worth noting maybe that although iOS 15 came out only in
| 2021, support for iOS 15 goes back to the iPhone 6S from
| 2015. Not very many people actively using iPhones older
| than that today.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| Apparently first one has to turn it on to start gathering
| the usage data. I just turned it on and it started with no
| data. So I'll see how it work's going forward.
|
| Thank you for sharing.
| [deleted]
| YeBanKo wrote:
| App Privacy Report lets you know if an app might have
| leaked your data, firewall can help you make sure it does
| not happen. Two different purposes.
| webmobdev wrote:
| And enabling this also allows Apple to collect the data
| from you to "improve the service". So Apple will now have
| more data on you.
| latexr wrote:
| Do you have a source for the claim? Just checked the
| feature and the "Learn more..." text specifically says
| data is kept locally.
| Twisell wrote:
| Actually privacy relay is currently in public beta as a part
| of Apple iCloud subscriptions plans.
|
| Unless I got it wrong when enabled it reroute all Apps trafic
| through this "limited VPN" to prevent tracking and access to
| local network.
|
| Apps that require access to local network must ask that
| permission explicitly. Streaming service (Netflix,
| Disney+,etc) do that for obvious performance gain. I noticed
| Microsoft Teams did it also (and I just revoked that thanks
| to this thread, it's a work app I better keep that out of my
| home local network).
| [deleted]
| mrbombastic wrote:
| So because they don't have fine grained permissions around
| network connections (which sounds like a usability nightmare)
| they don't protect you?
|
| What about:
|
| - Apple's limiting of advertising identifiers and requiring
| permission to track users across apps
|
| - increasingly fine grained location access including 'Only
| allow once' and warnings when an app is tracking you in
| background
|
| - sandboxed photo access so apps don't get access to all your
| photos
|
| - requiring developers submit privacy questionnaires with
| their app updates and showing how data is collected in each
| app
|
| - supporting creating private email aliases for signing up
| for services
|
| Just to name a few in the last few years.
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| > This is naive. Apple doesn't protect you.
|
| Apple has no commercial interest in breaking the users
| privacy and trust. Their business model is not to sell ads or
| work with 3rd party advertisers.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Apple sells ads.
| https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-
| advertisin...
|
| They track the stories you read on News & Stocks, and track
| your location to give you personalized ads.
|
| This integrates with Google Ad Manager 360 as well. They
| work with 3rd parties.
| https://support.apple.com/guide/adguide/integrate-
| workbench-...
| dmacedo wrote:
| Latest moves seem to imply Apple might want a slice of the
| Ad network pie. So I wouldn't bet on capitalistic
| ideals/incentives not overtaking idealistic consumer
| protections.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple
| -...
| edandersen wrote:
| I wonder if they considered an "iPhone Europe Edition" - USB-C,
| side loading, physical SIM cards. Sounds like a good phone!
| hcks wrote:
| Literally just buy an Android and stop imposing it on others
| fortuna86 wrote:
| [dead]
| bee_rider wrote:
| Sounds like a lot of changes, wonder how big the lag between
| the world and European version will be.
| Havoc wrote:
| I wouldn't count on Europe being the odd one out here. World
| vs US is a bigger gap than World vs EU given mmwave and cdma.
| kaba0 wrote:
| What's good about physical SIMs? I do like apple for daring to
| improve the status quo there, so I want my European Edition
| with only e-simsz
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Physical SIMs are convenient, especially for travellers and
| facilitate competition through super-easy carrier switching.
| What are the improvements of e-SIMs for customers? Please
| don't say size.
| reustle wrote:
| If you travel to more than 1 or 2 countries per year,
| especially less developed countries, you'll learn that your
| life (connection) depends on picking up cheap $5-15 sim cards
| at the border for each country.
|
| I couldn't imagine them jumping on the esim train in any
| useful way in the near term.
| kaba0 wrote:
| But without a major company pushing for the technically
| superior solution, it will never change, so I don't get the
| pushback.
| Reason077 wrote:
| In theory, eSIMs actually make life easier in that
| scenario.
|
| Easier to get online in a new country if you don't have to
| first seek out a physical SIM card. Plus you keep your home
| SIM secure in the phone where there's no danger of losing
| it.
|
| Instead, just get on WiFi when you arrive, take your pick
| of cheap offers, and download the eSIM directly to your
| phone.
|
| > _"I couldn 't imagine them jumping on the esim train in
| any useful way in the near term."_
|
| Depends on the country. Thailand, for example, is very eSIM
| friendly. But there's plenty of "developed" countries in
| Europe where eSIMs are almost unheard of.
| justeleblanc wrote:
| > Instead, just get on WiFi when you arrive, take your
| pick of cheap offers, and download the eSIM directly to
| your phone.
|
| Or before you even get there.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| There are multiple companies like Airalo offering pre-paid
| $5-15 eSIM cards for most countries in the world. They also
| offer continental and global eSIM working in multiple
| countries if you are moving a lot. The offering is a lot
| better than what you find at the border and you don't have
| to get your passport scanned by a random person. Most
| backpackers I know switched a long time ago.
|
| It's actually the scenario that finally convinced me that
| eSIM was a good idea.
| reustle wrote:
| I've used Airalo for years as well, but their global sim
| only supports 84 countries, and is usually 5-15x the
| price a local sim per GB. If you're spending a
| considerable amount of time in the country and tethering,
| it adds up.
| kmbfjr wrote:
| I think you need to compare the service tier of what
| world eSim carriers provide before mentioning the price.
|
| Yes, you can get service for that price. It has paltry
| data allowances compared to what OP is describing.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I can. I have used them extensively while travelling
| (always local offers - I never needed a sim for multiple
| countries but a European one is barely more expensive
| than a single EU country one for example). Airalo sells
| local esim for something like 200 countries with prices
| which are competitive and offering which are often better
| tailored to travellers.
|
| In plenty of countries if you try buying straight from a
| local provider you can't buy low amount of data or have
| to get voice with it. Meanwhile Airalo allows you to buy
| 1, 5 or 10GB for very cheap and topping up is pushing a
| button in their app.
|
| I meant it when I said it was insanely more convenient.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Some people value privacy and can buy phisical sims from
| stores without id's and it's perfectly legal
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Not in most of the world, no. Most place will have to scan
| your ID when selling you a SIM card.
| ulfw wrote:
| My China iPhones don't even have any eSIM support. Instead we
| get a dual nano SIM card slot.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-hk/HT209086
|
| Personally I'd love for eSIM to be there in ADDITION but not
| replacing the nano SIMs.
| worble wrote:
| I know nothing about esims, what makes them so much better
| than a physical sim? I can't say I have any major qualms with
| what I have right now, I just shove it in my phone and forget
| about it.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| It's a minor benefit, but you should get better
| waterproofing because you have one less port
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| I am in Japan. I am using some app called Ubigi.
|
| When I landed I made a one off 400 yen payment, like tree
| fiffdy or something, and immediately had data working right
| at the airport for the rest of the month. Apple Pay, one
| off, no contracts, no queues, no diligent service people.
| It saved probably 1 hour of my life! And it is somehow
| significantly cheaper (depends on the country, ymmv).
|
| Frankly I pity people who get off a long flight and wait in
| line to get an overpriced piece of plastic to stick in
| their phones like it is 1823.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It takes up space for no good reason, especially if you
| want to use multiple numbers.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Why would you want it with _only_ esim? Seeing as esim still
| works in iPhones with a phyiscal sim card slot, what benefits
| does dropping it get you?
| dontlaugh wrote:
| They're actually supported by carriers. In the UK there's
| only EE and only with a contract. I can't use eSIM with EE
| pay as you go.
| s3p wrote:
| Not much. Apple wanted eSIM for years but carriers fought
| them over it. They like the physical lock-in of SIM cards.
| Customers can't easily switch because they have to wait for a
| SIM to ship or go to a carrier's brick and mortar presence to
| replace it.
|
| Now? People can switch carriers while in their living room.
| Takes a matter of minutes. Absolutely frictionless.
| pmontra wrote:
| The last time I dropped my phone and broke its screen I took
| out the SIM and left the phone in a repair shop. I went home,
| put the SIM in an old phone. If the broken phone had an eSIM,
| would I been able to use the old one as a backup? Maybe by
| going to a shop and askig for a physical SIM. That would be
| slower and less convenient. A physical SIM fits in a Samsung
| A40 which is probably the smaller and lighter Android phone
| available today and in much smaller phones of the past so
| it's definitely not a burden.
| vore wrote:
| If your old phone was also eSIM compatible, you can just
| download the eSIM from your carrier like you would if you
| moved to any other phone.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| My carrier don't let you download an eSIM - they have to
| mail you a physical QR code that has a SIM number then
| swap them over the phone or in a store. Makes it a week
| long process at least.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| But you would need to somehow get in touch with said
| carrier. Granted, you could probably do that over WiFi
| but if my phone breaks when, say, I'm out camping I'm
| SoL.
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| The associated esim app has free connectivity to complete
| the signup flow without wifi. It is obviously more
| convenient to download an app to your backup phone than
| futz around with physical sims you just have to remember
| to do so before you go camping.
|
| Now you might retort aha! See! In a very narrow set of
| circumstances.. let me cut you off, look, you're going to
| need to remember to bring a paperclip or sim tool to do
| it the old fashioned way anyhow. So you're remembering
| something. If you're an amnesic lost in the woods you got
| bigger problems.
|
| Besides, those are 2 grams of weight savings in my ultra
| light backpacking setup!
| Cort3z wrote:
| Would you bring a spare phone then? Sounds implausible.
| If you did, and it's an emergency you can use a phone
| without a sim at all with the emergency network.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| I actually do, it's always good to have a few back up
| essential things if they don't take up too much space.
| Every time I go camping/travelling I update my old
| OnePlus 3T (LineageOS is still up-to-date which is
| amazing) and bring it with me. If my iPhone breaks I can
| move the SIM card and still keep at it.
| jackothy wrote:
| While I could see how the camping scenario might matter
| to a few people, I would personally rather have a couple
| mAh larger battery because of the slight physical space
| savings that I imagine eSIM brings.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| Oh yeah, agreed. If moving an eSIM requires me stowing
| away a QR code with my backup phone then I'll gladly give
| up my physical SIM slot for more battery.
| martinald wrote:
| In the UK most carriers also offer printed QR codes for
| the eSIM. These can be scanned more than once to activate
| it. So you can store that somewhere and scan it on
| another phone.
| rand846633 wrote:
| Btw, how would one authenticate to the carrier? Concerned
| anything not perfect would make sim swapping a even
| bigger problem...
| hnarn wrote:
| > you can just download the eSIM
|
| If we disregard the fact that _many_ older but still
| usable phones don't support e-sim (which was the original
| point), what do you mean "just" download the e-sim?
|
| At least in my country, getting an e-sim is a pretty
| involved process which requires secure authentication,
| and specifically in my case that authentication would be
| gone with the now-broken phone if one didn't have the
| foresight to have a backup (which many people do not).
|
| If you have a physical sim, you can move it to almost any
| (unlocked) mobile phone in existence (at least in Europe)
| and at most you'll need the PIN/PUK.
|
| Of course, this goes the other way as well if you drop
| your phone in the ocean for example, provided you have
| alternate authentication and a compatible phone, e-sim
| will have you up and running again much faster.
| s3p wrote:
| You literally just reach out to your carrier and they
| will activate your new eSIM.
| SSLy wrote:
| I have Orange Flex. I can just install the app on a new
| phone, login with email, and have new eSIM issued and
| installed within a minute.
| counttheforks wrote:
| Sounds like it would be trivial to compromise your phone
| number and sms 2fa
| SSLy wrote:
| How so? The carrier can issue new SIMs anyway, nothing I
| can help about, it's a trust or get fucked system.
|
| Password to Flex itself is in my 1password db. If that
| gets compromised I'd have way bigger problems than cloned
| phone number.
| reinsdyr wrote:
| Not everyone has that option. For my carrier I have to
| call them and ask if they can help me set up esim each
| time because I can't do it myself. And each time it takes
| at least 30 minutes. Plus I just don't trust esim yet, it
| hasn't been able to shine as a technology. Give it a few
| years, I'm all for esim, but we have to make the switch
| gradually. Give me both for now and keep physical sims
| alive for the next 7+ years to get everyone onboard. By
| then the process for getting an esim will have gotten
| waaay smoother.
| theodric wrote:
| Lucky for you, but I don't have that option. I also like
| having the ability to move a SIM between my 5G CPE and my
| phone. Not gonna replace a 2 year old, EUR700 CPE just to
| try and chase eSIM dreams.
| lozenge wrote:
| By this reasoning our SIM cards would still be their
| original credit card size.
| artdigital wrote:
| Recently moved to a new country (non-EU). The carrier I'm
| using does not offer eSIM and shipped me a physical SIM card.
| This is not an outlier, I have a couple of physical SIM
| cards, some US, that I wouldn't be able to use if the phone
| was eSIM only, like the recent US iPhone.
|
| Also moving a eSIM from iOS device to non-iOS device (for
| example to plug into my secondary Android) is a massive PITA.
| I always have to re-issue the SIM which I often can't do and
| need to jumps through customer support queries and hoops. My
| current provider back home doesn't even give me the option to
| do it while abroad and support told me to come back for a
| day, then finish the eSIM reissuing application, so I'm stuck
| with the physical SIM anyway.
|
| eSIMs will be great one day, but that day is not now. I much
| rather pop the SIM out of phone 1 and move it into phone 2,
| or iPad when I want, than wait hours (or sometimes days) to
| get a new eSIM approved, and repeat that process every single
| time I want to move a connection to another device
| theodric wrote:
| The eSIM is all about cost savings and more control for
| them, sold to you as more convenience for you. I'm not
| giving up my SIM!
| W4RH4WK55 wrote:
| That I can just take the SIM out and put it in a different
| phone?
|
| what's the migration process for eSIMs?
| tshaddox wrote:
| You need the carrier to offer eSIM, of course, but then you
| can just store a bunch of eSIMs on your iPhone and switch
| which one is active in the Settings app.
| spockz wrote:
| I think the GP question was how to migrate your eSIM to
| another phone.
|
| You can transfer the sim but it needs to be activated on
| the other phone. I have even seen reactivation charges of
| EUR5.
| W4RH4WK55 wrote:
| Yes, about how to move it to another phone, especially
| when my current phone just died. Maybe I dropped it and
| now the display no longer works.
| otterley wrote:
| Ask your carrier to send you a replacement. They can be
| delivered by QR code.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| That's the problem. Now your carrier is a single point of
| failure, and the typical person has zero leverage over
| the carrier.
| otterley wrote:
| Leverage? This is a standard customer service process.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| And when that process fails, what recourse does the
| average Joe have? Especially when you can't afford to
| have much downtime between phones.
| otterley wrote:
| I think you're unnecessarily worried about this. If you
| don't trust your carrier to get this process right,
| perhaps it's worth choosing a different carrier.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Do you know a carrier which you have any leverage
| against? I don't. Better get a physical SIM.
|
| Oh, you do? It's still a single point of failure.
| Customer support servers down? Should have gotten a
| physical SIM.
|
| Unbeatable servers? Good luck swapping eSIMs when you
| want to sell/throw away your phone abroad, out of range
| of internet. Should have gotten a phyical one.
|
| Never out of range? Wonder what you do when your phone
| breaks and you have no one to babysit you through the
| process. Should have gotten physical.
|
| Etc.
|
| That's what an additional sigle point of failure means:
| less control over your own infrastructure.
| otterley wrote:
| If this actually happens to people in real life, let's
| talk about it. All indications are that this problem
| isn't a serious one yet.
|
| New technologies often improve things in some way while
| introducing concerns and potential drawbacks in other
| ways. The question is whether, on balance, the new way is
| worth the risk.
|
| My experience so far is that it is -- it's very
| convenient to be able to use a service like Airalo to
| order prepaid eSIMs for data service in foreign countries
| in advance. It makes traveling a joy now, and my wife is
| irritated a whole lot less by the prepaid SIM hunt I used
| to go on when traveling abroad. Plus no more tools or
| risking losing your SIM tray (or the SIM itself) when you
| swap it out on an airplane tray table.
| ec109685 wrote:
| To the sibling reply to this, how is a physical sim any
| worse in this regard?
| shinycode wrote:
| My carrier is currently not doing eSIM. Also some low
| cost carriers can't be contacted in any other way than a
| chat. Which is a problem in many real world situations if
| you need an eSIM asap. Sometimes there is no one in the
| chat available at all.
| otterley wrote:
| If your carrier doesn't support eSIM, then this
| discussion doesn't apply to you. Carriers aren't going to
| make eSIM available until they have the support structure
| available to make it useful to customers.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I've heard of that but never ran into it myself. Isn't
| that also the case for some carriers with physical SIMs
| too?
| spockz wrote:
| I guess eSIM is still a luxury for now so they want to
| milk it. I have only ever heard of first time activation
| of a sim. Vodafone in NL requires an activation via their
| app, or phone, before first use. But I think that is
| normal. The last time I got a physical sim it was in 2013
| and I have transferred the same sim across multiple
| phones since.
| geocar wrote:
| Better: it's a menu option.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212780
|
| eSIMs also have the advantage of an activation card can be
| sent instantly from almost anywhere (it's a QR code) which
| is great if your phone (and physical sim) are lost or
| damaged.
| Xylakant wrote:
| > Some carriers support SIM transfers from your previous
| iPhone to your new iPhone without needing to contact them
|
| "Some" is true afaik. It's at the providers discretion.
|
| AFAIK it's also only possible if you're moving from
| iPhone to iPhone, not if you're moving to an Android. I'm
| not certain moving back and forth between multiple phones
| is easily supported.
|
| I like e-sims in general, but this is a downside for some
| use cases.
| supertrope wrote:
| In theory eSIM allows for self service without going to a
| store or waiting for shipping. In practice you might be
| on hold with your phone company for an hour. Some USA
| MVNOs don't support eSIM.
| Xylakant wrote:
| As the person managing phone contracts in our company, I
| really like that part of eSIMs. I can mail a phone or
| have the employee purchase one and then mail my providers
| support and I'm all set. About one hour later, the phone
| will have connectivity. If you're using an MDM solution
| that supports it, you can even manage the assigned eSIMs
| there.
|
| Now, we're on a business contract and we have a
| responsive team on the other side, so the comfort of this
| hinges on the provider obviously.
| geocar wrote:
| Sounds terrible. Here in socialist Europe it is exactly
| as easy as I just made it sound.
| black3r wrote:
| Not everywhere in Europe..., In Slovakia 3/4 operators
| have single-use QR codes (and for the 4th you have to
| first remove your eSIM from your old phone before
| transferring to new, which wouldn't help in case of
| broken/stolen phone) and none of them have an easy to use
| web interface to generate a new one, you have to contact
| support somehow for them to generate it for you.
|
| One operator even charges 10EUR for a new QR code for
| your eSIM (same price as getting a new physical SIM
| card).
| jackothy wrote:
| Reading this comment and others, it sounds to me like
| legislating the carriers and phone manufacturers to force
| them to make eSIM more user friendly would work just as
| well (or better?) as legislation to mandate physical SIM
| slots.
| black3r wrote:
| Yes, definitely. And while we're at it also force them to
| support eSIM smartwatch profiles. In Slovakia 0 carriers
| support them, not even Telekom, which supports them in
| 4/5 neighboring countries..
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If the phone breaks it's much easier to just transfer the
| card to a different phone though, if a code needs to be
| sent there's the identification problems.
| JD557 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I don't think this is always true for
| physical SIMs.
|
| I recently bought a temporary SIM in the US during my
| holidays (StraightTalk) and was surprised that you can only
| use the physical SIM after you register online with you
| IMEI. I haven't checked, but I imagine that after that the
| card would only work with that IMEI.
|
| Fortunately, I don't think this is a practice in Europe.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| To be fair, though, Straight Talk is absolutely hot
| garbage. I had a fiasco trying to activate two physical
| SIMs and port numbers to them back in January. Their
| provisioning system chokes and dies on phones with both
| eSIM and physical SIM capability (like the factory-
| unlocked iPhone SE 3rd gen models I was trying to
| activate). I spent hours on the phone holding and talking
| to reps, getting disconnected and calling back to start
| all over again. It was a nightmare.
| JD557 wrote:
| I'm quite happy to read this, because my experience was
| also awful - they didn't accept the IMEI of 3 phones I
| tried and their app is full of ads (not to mention that I
| kept receiving scam calls).
|
| I really hope that it's because they are awful and this
| is not the typical American mobile phone experience.
| otterley wrote:
| The migration process is, you ask your carrier for a new
| eSIM. They send you one via QR code. That's pretty much it.
| nabla9 wrote:
| > you ask your carrier for a new eSIM.
|
| When your phone breaks, that's not a easy task.
| otterley wrote:
| You take your replacement phone, connect it to WiFi, then
| continue the process.
| jl6 wrote:
| eSIM is a potentially smoother setup process if the
| alternative is getting a card through the mail, but
| physical SIM switching is better than having to contact
| your carrier.
| Hamuko wrote:
| And then your carrier bills you 3EUR for it, because they
| can. They can also just disable the iPhone-to-iPhone eSIM
| transfer functionality. Ask me how I know.
|
| eSIMs are incredibly user-hostile because they switch the
| ownership of a SIM card from the customer to the
| provider, so you're completely at their mercy if you need
| to transfer over your SIM card from one device to
| another. And Apple facilitates this.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Where I am, the migration process is: you drag your
| physical body with an ID to the operator's office. There
| is no "send".
| onion2k wrote:
| Dealing with the carrier is usually the worst part of
| owning a phone. Asking for a new esim is likely to send
| you down a path of navigating a process where they try to
| sell you an upgrade, or they send you a QR code that
| doesn't work, or a million other possible problems.
| pyr0hu wrote:
| In my case, it was two clicks in the carrier's web
| interface and I got the new QR code showed me and even
| sent by email. No upgrades, no dark patterns, just
| presented a QR code, I scanned it, worked. It took like 2
| minutes
| onion2k wrote:
| Warning: Rant
|
| Yes, but what does that tell us? How is that useful? All
| you've done is point out a situation where the happy path
| works. If you have a great carrier whose systems are
| working correctly then it's going to be fine. That's what
| you'd expect. No one really cares about the cases where
| things go right. They're boring. They _should_ be boring.
| The problem is never what happens when it works, but what
| happens when it _doesn 't_ work.
|
| I've spent the past two and a half decades learning that
| the happy path is the least interesting part of any
| system. Building a working app is about 10% of the work
| of building anything. The other 90% is error handling,
| designing processes to get things back on track, and
| managing when things change. If you focus on the bit that
| works, and you assume that things _will_ work, and that
| any human part of the system works (where code is written
| by humans) it is bound to break at some point.
|
| The issue here is that taking a physical sim card works
| and dropping it in a different handset has far fewer
| moving parts and it's all stuff that's been proven over
| the past 30 years. There is less to go wrong. As soon as
| you start adding carriers and their shitty websites into
| the mix things _will_ screw up for a non-trivial number
| of users.
| otterley wrote:
| How about we wait and see if this actually happens
| instead of prematurely complaining that the sky is
| falling?
|
| All indications so far are that eSIMs work quite well.
| Plus it's pretty awesome to be able to purchase prepaid
| service through a company like Airalo when traveling
| abroad and to be able to use it instantly. Same goes for
| switching carriers.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > Dealing with the carrier is usually the worst part of
| owning a phone.
|
| It's probably intentional. I was reading an article in
| the French press the other day [0] on the subject. Some
| head of something or other in the industry said they were
| weary of mostly Apple, Samsung, and Google starting to
| like playing the providers and removing the actual
| carriers from the users' psyche. "The SIM card is the
| last physical link between the carrier and the client".
|
| I've also checked my carrier's site for getting an esim.
| Apparently I'd have to pay the same amount to get one as
| for a physical one (minus delivery costs). But at least,
| contrary to some other commenters' situation, they seem
| to allow you to move it from phone to phone as long as
| you hold on to your qr code. They, of course, don't offer
| the option of storing it in the "secure" client area.
|
| [0] https://www.lefigaro.fr/secteur/high-tech/avec-l-
| esim-la-car...
| criddell wrote:
| When I bought my phone last year at a carrier store, they
| really, really pushed me to get a physical SIM card. I
| asked them why they wanted me to install a physical SIM
| they told me I'll get higher data speeds.
| baby wrote:
| If you're traveling and want to buy a cheap esim, good luck.
| zarzavat wrote:
| In many countries there are zero local carriers that support
| eSIMs. Maybe in some hypothetical future this is not the
| case, but at least in this decade a phone that has a physical
| SIM is essential.
| neximo64 wrote:
| It will be quite undesirable to distribute apps through a means
| where economies of scale are not available for example if there
| is no US market
| Agingcoder wrote:
| if you're nvidia and want to provide a proper cloud gaming
| app (not browser based, which has resolution limitations), it
| might be worth it. Apple's conditions tend to be quite
| restrictive (which is why they're having problems in the
| first place), so I somehow suspect there's a rather large
| market, and the eu is very large anyway.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Europe is a large enough market by itself. It's slightly
| bigger than the US one.
| neximo64 wrote:
| No digital market has Europe as a larger market. When you
| substitute revenue for profit Europe is typically less than
| 10% or even less than 5% of profits if there are any for a
| company targeting electronic sales. The European customer
| is far more spend thrift.
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't think things will be a problem. Distributing software
| is fairly easy; for most apps, uploading the app binary to
| their website as though it's an image file or video will be
| sufficient. And, then you get 30% more money for your
| business. It will be quite popular just for the cost savings.
|
| (Distributing software is not always easy, as game companies
| that have 100GB game downloads on launch day will tell you.
| But, for most apps, it will be easy enough.)
| neximo64 wrote:
| The issue about distribution is never the technical aspect
| you are describing, it's about getting people to visit that
| website/app store in the first place. If it were that
| aspect aspect companies like T-Mobile, Equinix, Vodafone,
| Orange would dominate it. Even after the the app store is
| available in Europe, these companies have no chance of
| success.
|
| That is what it looks like will be very undesirable because
| it will be fragmented and competing with an all-world app
| store that is bundled with iOS. If you were a developer you
| would prefer 1000 sales at 30% cut, vs 5 sales with a 0%
| (supposedly still 30% if the chatter is right on Apple
| charging for sideloading) cut, so that would kind of
| feedback loop and make less people list on those app
| stores, which in turn makes them undesirable.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| How would "charging for sideloading" work? If I publish
| an app on my website, I wouldn't have a contract with
| apple, right? Would they charge the user?
| Vespasian wrote:
| They could try some shenanigans like requiring
| "certification" to side load anything and that would come
| with a contract.
|
| It would be struck down by the courts and version 2 of
| this regulation but for a few years it would be there.
|
| I'm hoping apple doesn't do that but at this point I
| think they'll try anything they can to protect their
| golden goose (aka app store) even from minor competition.
| jrockway wrote:
| I'm not sure if the App Store is the amazing marketing
| tool that it's sold as. There are millions of apps,
| nobody is going to find yours.
|
| The biggest problem with Apple's revenue model is that
| they want the 30% for people that aren't really
| benefiting from the App Store. Spotify built their brand
| without Apple, and if you want their app, you just click
| the link they email you.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| This was reported months ago.
| zacksiri wrote:
| [flagged]
| jessekv wrote:
| I'm sure they won't make it easy. There will be many warnings
| and scary prompts about external apps being untrusted.
| Definitely not installable with a stray click.
| indrora wrote:
| Part of the issue with Android is that, despite the fact that
| application packages are signed, their signatures only
| guarantee future upgrade tampering isn't a problem.
|
| Meanwhile, Apple is likely still going to require sideloading
| to have a valid Notary certificate, which is bound to a root
| CA, meaning that Apple can handle some amount of validation of
| certificates and revocations.
| ko27 wrote:
| Is anybody else upset that people are actively making up
| stories to prop up Apple on HN? Most of what you said is
| misleading or false:
|
| > Here in Thailand banking apps fraud is rampant
|
| Citation needed (on the "rampant" part).
|
| > Most of the cases are found to be on android devices
|
| Even if it's true most of the phones in Thailand are Android.
|
| > clicking some link that installs some app
|
| Not possible the way you describe it. You need to go through
| several system screens and popups to install a third party apk
| file from browser.
|
| > takes control or mobile banking and transfers money from
| their account
|
| As an app developer I can say, this is probably false. There is
| no API to do anything like that. Unless we are talking about a
| 0 day exploit, like iPhone NSO exploits. In that case you need
| to provide a source.
|
| Let's check your source
| https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40024972
|
| They are sending detailed instructions to victims on how to
| install screen recording apps. Users are always warned if their
| screen is being recorded on both Android and iOS, sideloaded or
| not. It's a matter of false trust, not sideloading. It's a
| phishing attack, those people would fall victim in any OS.
| zacksiri wrote:
| You can do some further reading here
|
| - https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/2524469/mobile-
| banking-...
|
| - https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40024972
|
| Enjoy!
| ko27 wrote:
| I did, and you conclusions are completely wrong. I updated
| my comment. Do you seriously think that iOS has no screen
| recording apps? It's a phishing attack, you can ask the
| user to screen record using an app-store app and send you
| the recording.
| __tmk__ wrote:
| I think my banking app disallows taking screenshots of it.
| (Presumably this also means it would be hidden from screen
| recordings? Not quite sure.)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The apps are rarely the problem, the goal is to get the
| user to install TeamViewer or AnyDesk software that has
| legitimate uses and then get them to visit their bank's
| site on the computer.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| sideloading != clicking a dodgy link
|
| clicking a dodgy link can download an android installer file
| (.apk), but installing .apks from unknown sources has to be
| explicitly enabled in android security settings (twice in
| latest versions) following warnings about trusting the link
| source and possible damage
|
| it's not as simple as downloading a dodgy .exe in Windows and
| clicking 'yes' on the UAC prompt
|
| whereas _sideloading_ is intended for developers when testing
| and debugging apps. this involves enabling Developer Mode in
| android security settings, connecting to your phone via USB,
| and issuing sideload commands from a console
| shrx wrote:
| No. Preventing people from doing something "for their own good"
| is never the right solution. Instead, we should strive to
| educate people on proper online safety measures so that they
| don't fall victim to fraudulent attempts.
| [deleted]
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > preventing people from doing something "for their own good"
| is never the right solution.
|
| https://www.osha.gov/etools/machine-guarding/presses/two-
| han...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockout%E2%80%93tagout
|
| > educate people on proper online safety measures so that
| they don't fall victim to fraudulent attempts.
|
| This is so inefficient and prone to failure. You think you're
| an expert, but my mom is not an expert. I don't want to
| educate my mom, I want to just hand her something that's safe
| to use.
| razemio wrote:
| Your mum would be tech-savvy enough to enable "allow ipa
| from untrusted sources" buried deep in the settings? That's
| how it works on Android. I believe the main problem with
| android is, that there are tons of old devices not
| receiving any security updates.
|
| It's close to impossible, that my mum figures out how to
| install an untrusted apk on her Samsung s22.
|
| I guess what I want to say is: Having good security should
| not prevent you from installing custom software if you want
| to.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| My mom can barely use the app store.
|
| The side-loading debate is an indirect reference and to
| talk about side loading it must first be decomposed.
|
| Question 1 is should Apple be able to prevent an engineer
| from running software they want on their phone? Probably
| not.
|
| Question 2 is should Apple be able to prevent a layman
| from running software they want on their phone with
| effort? Debatable.
|
| Question 3 is should Apple be able to prevent a layman
| from running software they want on their phone easily? I
| think so.
|
| Question 4 is should Apple be able to prevent an
| alternative app store? Yes. Definitely.
|
| So should side loading be allowed depends greatly on
| which question a person is asking and what the
| "sideloading" reference is pointing to.
|
| Should I be able to choose what medicines I want to take
| without a pharmacist/MD? I have a hard time with this
| because I think I should be able to ingest whatever I
| want and I think I am more intelligent than the average
| person, on the flip side, I think if I were a pharmacist,
| I would say absolutely not. If you asked me if anyone
| should be able to take any medication they want without
| blessing, I look at the ivermectin debacle and realize
| "probably not."
| wiseowise wrote:
| > https://www.osha.gov/etools/machine-guarding/presses/two-
| han...
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockout%E2%80%93tagout
|
| Not sure what those links are supposed to show, but having
| safeguards and completely disallowing something is a
| different matter.
|
| If all, you're just proving parent's point.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Two handed presses are a technical prevention which
| restricts a person from putting their hands in danger.
| Education was not enough.
|
| Lockout/tagout is a technical prevention which restricts
| other people from messing with a system that could
| endanger you. Education was not enough.
|
| A monopoly app store is a technical prevention that
| restricts someone from running un-vetted software that
| could potentially steal your life savings or compromise
| your entire digital life. Do you think education is
| enough?
|
| I am not saying that that is true or correct, but I do
| think that's an argument that someone who disagrees would
| have to take in good faith and respond to satisfactorily.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Two handed presses are a technical prevention which
| restricts a person from putting their hands in danger.
| Education was not enough.
|
| That's what "Are you sure you want to enable
| sideloading?" toggle is.
|
| > Lockout/tagout is a technical prevention which
| restricts other people from messing with a system that
| could endanger you. Education was not enough.
|
| That's what OS is.
|
| > A monopoly app store is a technical prevention that
| restricts someone from running un-vetted software that
| could potentially steal your life savings or compromise
| your entire digital life. Do you think education is
| enough?
|
| A monopoly app store is a technical prevention that
| restricts someone from running un-vetted software that
| could potentially prevent monopoly app store revenue or
| god-forbid bypass DRM. So what?
|
| And App Store absolutely does have malware
| https://lifehacker.com/great-now-the-apple-app-store-has-
| mal.... If it's not even 100% secure then it's not worth
| sacrificing my freedom to choose.
| mikebos wrote:
| That a very American viewpoint. This is why Americans have a
| gun problem with all the school shootings and random killing
| going on there.
|
| Sometimes it's a good idea to don't let people do something
| for their own good.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Love how we're equating sideloading to school shootings.
| mikebos wrote:
| Agree, blanket statements as "never a solution" always
| bring out the worst in me :-)
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| That hasn't worked out for the past 30 years and with every
| passing year there's more to learn. Telling someone they need
| to spend several hours to learn how to safely use their
| device is a good way to market the competitor where that's
| not required.
| zacksiri wrote:
| Believe me the central bank puts out social media posts to
| inform the public on a regular basis, however a lot of people
| still fall for these frauds because the fraudsters prey on
| their greed and fear.
|
| I've seen even the most educated tech savvy people fall for
| these frauds. So I would say "educating people" is
| insufficient.
|
| Another problem is because the law works extremely slowly, by
| the time any legal action can be taken to take down the
| destination bank accounts the fraudsters have already gained
| and taken the money.
|
| Sideloading is the thing that works because the legal
| infrastructure simply can't keep up with the fraudsters.
|
| I would be inclined to agree with you if I know that the
| legal system immediately stops fraudsters and returns the
| money to the people without damange. We're far from that.
| tonylemesmer wrote:
| Engineering disagrees. Having safety interlocks on machines
| is seen as necessary and sensible to prevent accidental harm.
|
| If you want to achieve something that you think sideloading
| is the only answer for then maybe try and find another
| solution? Btw. I'm not arguing we shouldn't educate people
| about the dangers of phishing etc etc. just that engineers
| should find better solutions than shortcuts.
|
| Some people will never understand the need to be vigilant.
| And even vigilant people have momentary lapses of vigilance.
|
| [edit] i think we're talking about deliberate sideloading but
| also accidental sideloading in the same breath here. One
| enables the other? Accidental sideloading is very much
| undesirable.
| nasmorn wrote:
| But then we need to take the ability of gatekeepers to
| forbid random things away. Why can't I run docker on my
| iPad?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Engineering disagrees. Having safety interlocks on
| machines is seen as necessary and sensible to prevent
| accidental harm._
|
| Right, which is why operating systems ship with security
| and sandboxing features. Security does not require an App
| Store.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| Security features should be there to prevent a user from
| accidentally letting malicious things happen. Key word:
| accidentally. One does not accidentally enable apk
| installation from untrusted sources on Android. If you
| spend the time going deep into the settings of your phone,
| and dismiss two massive security warnings then I don't
| really have any sympathies and those users should have some
| more common sense. It's like wanting to close down a metro
| system because some people are incapable of reading the
| warning signs and jump down to the rails.
|
| With these kinds of security problems you need to decide
| where the restrictiveness is best for society and I would
| very much argue that in the case of phone security it's on
| the side of sideloading.
| tonylemesmer wrote:
| Except when a sideloading switch is so easy to access
| that naive users are easily manipulated into enabling it
| or having a security policy installed on their phones
| that disables it.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Engineering disagrees. Having safety interlocks on
| machines is seen as necessary and sensible to prevent
| accidental harm.
|
| > safety interlocks
|
| That's what sideloading switch is.
| Szpadel wrote:
| I'm surprised that there are many cases as to enable
| sideboarding on Android you basically have to go to settings
| and enable option that basically tell you that this isn't a
| good idea if you don't know what you are doing and then you
| have to do the same for the application that triggers the
| install.
|
| but on the other hand I already saw people trying Linux and
| being surprised that after multiple confirmations "this is
| probably a terrible idea, are you sure" it broke their
| systems
| Muromec wrote:
| > and enable option that basically tell you that this isn't
| a good idea
|
| ... and people just click though it without reading,
| because it's UX 101 -- nobody reads your texts, manuals and
| things while in the flow.
| Someone wrote:
| > Preventing people from doing something "for their own good"
| is never the right solution.
|
| Never? So, no laws against speeding, no restrictions of the
| use of DDT, etc?
|
| I think that, to make electronic devices usable for all, we
| have to restrict what they can do.
|
| > Instead, we should strive to educate people on proper
| online safety measures
|
| I would say "in addition", not "instead". I think it's a pipe
| dream we can educate the majority of the population and keep
| them educated in these things.
|
| Even if we restrict that to the tech savvy, they too grow
| old, can have periods in their live where they're so stressed
| that it limits their thinking, can get mild dementia, etc.
| rand846633 wrote:
| Your comparison seems unsuited: Laws against speeded or ddt
| are both not primary to protect yourself from your action,
| but rather to protect others from your actions.
| dist1ll wrote:
| > Most of the cases are found to be on android devices.
|
| Do you have some relevant sources about banking fraud? Android
| devices make up more than 70% of Thailand's market share [0],
| so it's not a surprise.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/814490/market-share-
| mobi...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The Thai government's Ministry of Digital Economy & Society
| has made multiple public requests for iOS users[1],
| mentioning that they need to avoid specific iOS apps[1][2],
| as well. That means scam apps were being distributed via the
| App Store.
|
| Also, the government mentions that the scams affect users of
| both platforms, because the scams propagate via calls, web
| links and emails that ask for personal information[2].
|
| [1] https://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/2487659/phone-users-
| warned-...
|
| [2] https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/2499931/online-
| scammers...
| zacksiri wrote:
| Right, but for Apple to take down those apps, it's much
| easier than taking down some random link the fraudsters put
| up.
|
| I'm not saying iOS is 100% bullet proof. I'm saying the
| problem is much more manageable without sideloading.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Google is able to use Play Protect in similar ways as
| Windows Defender, and the system can prevent malicious
| apps from installing or running based on signatures,
| profiling, certificates, etc. Just as iOS uses code
| signing and signatures to decide if an app was installed
| via the App Store, Android can do something similar, and
| more, to prevent malware from running.
|
| > _Right, but for Apple to take down those apps, it 's
| much easier than taking down some random link the
| fraudsters put up._
|
| Seems like the issue here is that the government has to
| tell iOS users not to install specific apps because Apple
| hasn't taken them down. I'm sure it's easy for Apple to
| do what it wants on the App Store, the issue is making
| them care. They have a history of letting multimillion
| dollar scams flourish on the App Store[1].
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/8/22272849/apple-app-
| store-s...
| zacksiri wrote:
| Usually the cases show up on social media in our country. The
| victims post that they've been frauded and generally blame it
| on the banks.
|
| The banks then reply and say "the fraud transaction
| originated from customer's device". When you look at the
| screenshots of victims giving example it's all Android as far
| as I can see.
|
| Generally after talking to the banks and customers discover
| that it was their own fault for clicking on a seemingly
| harmless link they shut up and go quiet.
|
| This is a story that plays out often here.
|
| I don't particularly have a link because these cases get
| deleted from social media (by the customer themselves) after
| the bank has proven that it's the customers fault.
|
| Edit: You can try searching the internet for "mobile banking
| fraud Thailand" you'll find these links, here is one example.
|
| https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/2524469/mobile-
| banking-...
|
| Edit: here is an example the article mentions downloading of
| .apk on android
|
| https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40024972
| matsemann wrote:
| Can't the banks implement some measures so that only their
| own apps can do transactions?
| zacksiri wrote:
| Believe me they're trying. They're now mandating
| biometric authentication, and I don't mean on device, I
| mean implemented by the banks app / backend. If you read
| the articles you'll see.
|
| Each year the central banks up the ante on security
| protocols to implement to stop the fraud. I should know I
| used to work for a finance app here in Thailand.
|
| We have to go through strict security audits, and
| procedures that costs a lot for any financial institution
| to implement.
|
| Doing 2 FA is already a mandate for doing transactions.
| However 2FA in Thailand is mostly done using SMS which is
| still not that secure.
|
| Forcing everyone to use a token or a 1Password app is
| also not viable since that's going to shut a lot of
| people out of mobile banking.
|
| It's a complex problem, which I think Apple has already
| solved. Disabling sideloading reduces so much costs
| downstream and made things simple and secure for the lay
| man.
| gambiting wrote:
| Literally nothing that you've said is a good excuse for
| forbidding sideloading. It would be actually trivial for
| a bank to only allow transactions from their apps, if
| they can't do that then they should be forced to take
| responsibility for fraud.
|
| Guess what happens currently on iOS instead? Instead of
| installing a custom app, you are sent a link to log in to
| a dodgy bank page with all your details with the exact
| same result.
|
| >>Disabling sideloading reduces so much costs downstream
| and made things simple and secure for the lay man.
|
| I don't believe this is the case, and I really believe
| any arguments otherwise are made in bad faith to maintain
| the status quo because obviously apple could never do any
| wrong.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > It would be actually trivial for a bank to only allow
| transactions from their apps
|
| How?
| gambiting wrote:
| What do you mean how? The app has a secure token only the
| app has, any traffic without that token is invalid. IOS
| already sandboxes all apps so the token would be
| impossible to extract. This is basic app security, I
| can't believe this is even discussed
| jeroenhd wrote:
| People extract tokens from apps all the time. Jailbreaks
| for modern versions of iOS do exist and if they become
| too hard to pull off, that'll just create a market for
| pre-jailbroken devices.
|
| Tokens embedded into your app can and will be extracted.
| You can make life harder for criminals by rapidly
| updating tokens and invalidating all but the last X
| updates, but I doubt your users are going to like that,
| and I doubt criminals will be stopped for long with the
| amount of money at stake.
|
| There are ways to make it incredibly difficult for hacked
| apps but if the file ends up at a user's device, you lose
| control.
| gambiting wrote:
| I'm not following. So we have to keep to the locked app
| store-only model because if we allowed
| sideloading....people could jailbreak their devices and
| apps could extract secrets? I don't follow.
|
| >>that'll just create a market for pre-jailbroken
| devices.
|
| I don't understand - people will get pre-jailbroken
| devices so they can be hacked easier? The whole idea with
| forcing apple to allow sideloading is that you can be on
| the very latest, most secure iOS version _and_ sideload
| apps.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I think you misunderstand. The secure token you mention
| isn't secure if it's part of your app, like any other API
| key or password. Fake apps will just extract that token
| from the real app and insert it into their own code.
| gambiting wrote:
| And how exactly will they do that on a non-jailbroken
| fully updated iOS installation?
|
| Not to mention that iOS apps keep those kinds of secrets
| in the Secure Enclave and you can't get anything out of
| it unless you are the app that put the secret in there in
| the first place - that doesn't change whether apple
| allows sideloading or not. If you need a jailbreak to
| break that protection then this isn't something that will
| affect your "normal" user like many here are worried
| about. Normal iOS protections will be more than enough.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > The app has a secure token only the app has
|
| What kind of token? How does it obtain it?
| xgb84j wrote:
| This is how I think it roughly works where I live: You
| get a per-user token directly at the bank or via mail
| (not email, but a physical envelope). Your banking app
| can use this token once to get a secret key. Secret key +
| user name + password allows you to use the banking app.
|
| Any way to circumvent this requires app isolation to be
| broken somehow.
| eastbound wrote:
| I hate that baks require the phone app, where
| transactions don't also require a computer: It enables
| racket where my aggressor can list my bank accounts; It
| also reduces the 2FA to 1FA (phone-only transactions with
| password + fingerprint + SMS only on the phone).
| gambiting wrote:
| I absolutely disagree with your conclusion. It's like
| forbidding people from working on their own cars because some
| people are stupid and kill themselves through their work(and
| that kind of thing is neither rare nor unusual).
|
| And it's not like people with iOS are resistant to being
| scammed - there are hundreds of ways criminals can dupe you to
| sending them money, the invoice scam being the simplest example
| and it doesn't require any special apps.
| zacksiri wrote:
| You should read this article[0]. It outlines clearly that
| victims are downloading .apk files
|
| [0] https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40024972
|
| Also your comparison of people 'working on their own cars' is
| a bit off here. Most people buy cars to drive, and give the
| car to the mechanic to 'work on'. It's much much harder to
| repair your own car than to click a link that can scam you.
| gambiting wrote:
| No one said anything about repairs - people are currently
| free to buy and fit their own wipers from 3rd parties
| because we have specific legislation that says
| manufacturers can't forbid 3rd parties from making spare
| parts. I don't see why the same shouldn't apply here.
|
| >>You should read this article[0]. It outlines clearly that
| victims are downloading .apk files
|
| I feel for the victims but I literally don't see how that's
| an argument against sideloading.
| zacksiri wrote:
| I'm simply presenting a case in my own country. Where
| I've seen the negative effects of sideloading playing
| out. People's livelihoods are being destroyed.
|
| I do understand that sideloading is something desirable
| for some percentage of people.
|
| Point is every thing has pros / cons. Sideloading is like
| buying a car and upgrading it with NOS. Yeah it's
| wonderful. Your going to have a very powerful car. But
| the risks also increase. Most people don't need NOS in
| their car.
|
| I'm speaking for most people. In my household I recommend
| everyone to use Apple devices, it keeps them safe and
| happy.
|
| Ultimately everyone is entitled to their own choices and
| have to accept the consequences. I guess we'll have to
| wait and see how it plays out now that it's coming to iOS
| 17 in the EU.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Sideloading is like buying a car and upgrading it with
| NOS. Yeah it's wonderful. Your going to have a very
| powerful car. But the risks also increase. Most people
| don't need NOS in their car.
|
| No, sideloading is freedom. Imagine that car manufacturer
| put a part in your car that only works if: * watch ads or
| pay $ every month * collects all your information * has
| fake freedom to install only parts from their store that
| follow previous two points * extorts authors of parts for
| 30%
|
| all while smugly saying "take it or leave it".
| the_common_man wrote:
| Agreed. There was a study that almost 100% of virus in
| computers is because of people installing programs in
| computers. Imo, all laptops must have an AppStore controlled by
| the laptop manufacturer. It should all become totally locked
| down. I am sure eu already regrets computers being so open.
| seydor wrote:
| Most people use web banking , so iOS or not it doesn't matter.
| Apple just truly believes in security by ignorance.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| That was true maybe 10 years ago? Every bank has an app now,
| even to use normal banking from desktop instead of digital
| keys everybody is using mobile banking app's 2fa.
| RalfWausE wrote:
| Not EVRERYBODY... luckily my bank (a tiny bank in the
| Volksbank group) gives me the option to use an external TAN
| generator
| zeitg3ist wrote:
| Most people I know (European here) use a mobile banking app.
| For my bank, the mobile app also serves as 2fa for the
| website, so it's impossible not to have it.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| [citation needed]
| DCKing wrote:
| As pointed out in other replies I don't think you're doing a
| good job to connect bank fraud to sideloading here, and
| therefore I don't really believe that they are so directly
| connected. But for the sake of discussion I can assume there's
| some truth to it. It is true that Apple's restricting freedoms
| could have some positive side effects, so I'm happy to go along
| with this gut feeling.
|
| > I suspect that the EU will regret forcing Apple to enabling
| sideloading when the number of fraud cases go up.
|
| Maybe some degree of that is worth it? The functioning of
| digital markets and preventing platform monopolies seems very
| intrinsically valuable for both ethical and economical reasons.
| Moreover, it's highly unlikely this will be in some cartoon
| situation with some massive explosion of fraud.
|
| What if this is just a small price worth paying? Something we
| need to accept in our lives and help further focus education
| efforts? That seems like a more valuable discussion than most
| of the discussion going on in this thread.
| amelius wrote:
| Yet, an app store and a content filter are orthogonal concepts.
| There is no reason why Apple should control both.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| [flagged]
| gambiting wrote:
| I was going to say it feels like apple "alligned" account. Oh
| no look at all the fraud happening on android, we have to
| keep iOS fully locked to prevent people from their own
| stupidity (and protect our own interests, but please don't
| talk about that).
| hurtuvac78 wrote:
| Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains
| me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this.
|
| There is a great tool to increase security: the browser and its
| sandbox. You don't need to install anything fishy on your phone,
| and the sandbox rights coukd be sufficient for many apps.
|
| But as an example, Apple denies the full screen feature for
| websites and even PWA... only installed ones. There's no good
| reason except favoring apps/appstore. For security? Works great
| on Android.
|
| And you cannot use a third party browser, since they forbid that
| (all are Safari based)
|
| Thank you, EU!!
| zeta0134 wrote:
| The full screen feature works fine on websites for me? Well
| mostly fine, it's rubbish for games in particular due to a user
| hostile feature that forbids rapid screen taps, insisting that
| you might be using an on screen keyboard and denying you the
| autonomy to tell Safari to please not. But ignoring that, the
| feature seems to exist. What am I missing?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Interesting. You say it works fine and then in the same
| breath you make a point to show it isn't and then choose to
| ignore it. What you're missing is that Safari shouldn't have
| that bit hard wired in.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| (ah, the juxtaposition was the point. I'm bad at humor
| early in the morning)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Np, I'm apparently equally bad at spotting it :)
| mnd999 wrote:
| Users don't want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows
| the platform UI conventions. It's good that Apple care enough
| about about UX to actually enforce this.
| Cort3z wrote:
| I want good PWAs. I don't want borderline spyware-apps with
| access to all kinds of apis. There is no reason why a
| messaging app needs my gyro data, or gps, or all of the other
| stuff they just implicitly get because they are an app. I'm
| starting to think that some of the worst that ever happened
| was that Firefox OS failed.
| palata wrote:
| How will PWAs prevent your messaging app from getting gps
| data?
|
| A bad native app can require the gps permission, but a bad
| PWA app will be able to do the same, right?
| matsemann wrote:
| If they want it, download the app then. Allow others to not
| download it and use a PWA if they'd like.
|
| Actually I believe you're wrong: if people actually preferred
| Apple's way of doing it, Apple would have no reason to
| restrict other ways.
|
| They restrict it because people prefer the other way, and
| that would harm Apple's profits.
| brookst wrote:
| Too much Kool aid there. Apple values vertical integration
| and control of the OS. The fact that they do not allow
| users to set pink text on green background as the system
| default should not be taken as proof that most users prefer
| reading pink on green.
| incongruity wrote:
| Well, for one, this isn't just a two-party ecosystem. It's
| not just the consumer and Apple. It's also the app
| developers. App developers are largely the ones pushing
| things like PWA. Apple's long-standing heavy handed take on
| design standards has always been driven by a focus on
| consumer/end-user experience and it has often been chafed
| against by developers and more technical types. For
| instance- Apple rightly refused to allow flash and Java
| apps on iOS devices and I think my user experience was the
| better for it.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| They continue to restrict it because look at how much trash
| was (is?) on the Android store; they restricted it even
| more in the early days because of the torrent of low effort
| fart / gag apps.
| capableweb wrote:
| > They continue to restrict it because look at how much
| trash was (is?) on the Android store
|
| You're saying this like there isn't any trash on the
| Apple App Store? Come on... Beyond the top lists or other
| discovery models, the Apple App Store contains bunch of
| things that will never even be downloaded by anyone...
|
| It was more exclusive in the beginning, I give you that.
| But today, it has as much trash as any other app store.
| tormeh wrote:
| The iOS app store has way more trash than the Android
| one. Android has lots of open source software. iOS has a
| bajillion crappy $2 apps instead. I got an iPad from
| work, and not only does it not have a calculator from
| Apple, it's really hard to find a lightweight, low-
| permission, ad-free calculator on the App Store. I
| eventually had to settle for one designed for iPhones.
| matsemann wrote:
| That's a problem of having a single app store everyone
| has to go through. Why would you care about a thousand
| fart apps existing as PWAs online? They wouldn't affect
| you at all.
| palata wrote:
| I don't think that they care about not having useless
| apps. They care about the apps looking "integrated" in
| their system, right? I am an Android user and an Android
| developer, and I must admit that iOS apps usually look
| more consistent (in terms of UX).
|
| And that's one of the values of Apple: this vertical
| integration that makes the overall thing look more
| polished (and probably easier to use to some extent).
|
| Of course, they are happy to keep the restriction because
| they can take 30% commission on the paid apps, I'm not
| saying they are perfect and that there is nothing to
| improve. But I am not completely convinced that forcing
| them to lower their standards of integration (by allowing
| any kind of apps) is necessarily beneficial for the
| users.
|
| After all, why do developers want PWAs? Probably mostly
| because it is cheaper for them, not because it's better
| for their users, right?
| nicce wrote:
| Average person does not know what they want. They don't
| know how technology works.
|
| They don't even see difference between PWA and apps.
|
| If everything becomes PWA, there is no transparency for the
| apps. No indication what data they collect. No control for
| the quality of the apps. No moderation over malicious apps.
|
| PWAs need more permissions to provide the functionality
| people need, it is not just website.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| I'm pretty sure "the average person doesn't know what
| they want" is a belief that powered everything from
| eugenics to genocide to our toxic culture around health,
| happiness and consumerism.
|
| So it appears the non-average person doesn't have a clue
| what's right for the clueless masses either.
|
| Liberty, choice, community and respect. That's all that
| is needed.
| brookst wrote:
| Yes, everyone who has a different utility function from
| you is a closet eugenicst.
|
| Respect, as you say, is important. Leaf by example.
| nicce wrote:
| You took liberty to generalize what I said.
|
| I was referring into technical implementations and what
| risks are included. It requires deep undertanding how
| these things work. Average user does not have it. Many
| aspects are invisible to the end-users, like the war
| against malware in App Store.
|
| The end-user knows what they want in terms of end-result.
| How to to get the job done with a tool (app). They can
| compare end-results.
|
| Sometimes, however not all results all there to be
| compared. Because, they don't understand what kind of
| tools can be actually created. They are happy with the
| current one because they think it is the best what can
| be.
|
| Or, what else the tool can do besides their advertised
| functionality. Which can be malicious or harmful to user
| in another way.
|
| Or tools could work in a better way, but are currently
| hindered for monetary gain.
|
| All this requires specialised knowledge.
| kajaktum wrote:
| What? You can both believe that "people don't know what's
| good for them" and that "liberty and freedom is necessary
| for a functioning society". For example, insects is a
| pretty good source of nutrient and protein but is there
| anyone within a 100 miles from you that will willingly
| eat them daily? Even easier, we all know, deep down, that
| we could be doing something better, but how often do we
| rise up to that ideal?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| This "average person"[non-techie] doesn't even know what
| PWA is/means/stands for. Truth.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Do they need to know what AAC or MP4 is to use Spotify?
|
| The point is the experience, not the name of it.
| devjab wrote:
| > Average person does not know what they want.
|
| The problem with statements like that, aside from the
| loftiness, is that you end up with a world where people
| who think they know better get to decide. I worked in the
| public sector digitalisation, and while I'm a programmer
| we were bundled with the rest of IT so I experienced what
| the supporters had to deal with. This included a lot of
| employees who genuinely couldn't tell if the device they
| needed help for was an iOS or Android device without some
| guidance. So I'm not going to dispute the claims you make
| about how it's nice to protect the "average person" from
| themselves, but I don't think any of us will like the
| what that sort of thinking creates. Well, maybe some
| people will, but a lot won't.
|
| I recently wanted something for my two-factor keys and
| the best all I could find was for Android but not iOS. I
| ended up filming over a few $ for a Bitwarden
| subscription, but there are just a lot of little stories
| like that. I mean, I'm not in the audience for Fortnite,
| but I'm sure a lot of people were sad when it left iOS. A
| of which can be avoided if we stop giving all the power
| to the tech companies.
|
| I'm not sure Apple really has anything to fear from it
| either in terms of security or usability. Part of the
| reason they sell so well, at least to me, is that they
| have the ease of use and tech that works out of the box.
| It's very rare that I need side loading. I'm not a huge
| fan of the Safari enforcement, but it doesn't really
| bother me either as I can still use FireFox and the sync.
| I think Google might have more to fear from it, since
| they need to peddle commercials inside apps like YouTube,
| and you can block that if they allow you to side-load app
| blockers, but for Apple I think almost everyone will just
| keep on trucking. It will of course hurt their control
| over payments, like the original poster points out, but
| that's not really "my" or the "average persons" problem.
| nicce wrote:
| > I'm not sure Apple really has anything to fear from it
| either in terms of security or usability.
|
| Sideloading will hit hard for Apple's pro-privacy brand.
|
| You lose transparency and quality control for the apps.
| They don't need to tell you about their data collection
| practices. They don't have to do actually anything at
| all, since you can't ban those apps anymore.
|
| Phishing is still a problem of Android and that will
| become a problem on iOS too. On Android there is still
| business for anti-virus engines because of the
| sideloading and Phishing. On Apple devices, there isn't
| really need for anti-virus but it will become relevant
| again.
|
| If the sideloading will become very easy, big players who
| make money with data collection, will leave the platform.
| You won't find Meta apps soon from the App store. They
| are so big that people will download these apps
| regardless.
|
| If that happens, how many fake Instagram apps we will see
| after that? And you can't ban them from the App store
| anymore.
| palata wrote:
| Users don't choose what they use, they use what they must.
| I can't choose to use Signal if everybody uses WhatsApp. I
| can't choose a non-ElectronJS Slack client because it
| doesn't exist.
|
| If PWA is cheaper to make, companies will go there. Whether
| or not it's better for the users. Companies want to make
| money, not help users.
| kajaktum wrote:
| > Company wants to make money, not help users
|
| Yea but Apple is a company too...
| s3p wrote:
| Good for them?
| jakub_jo wrote:
| If users don't want crappy PWAs than they wont use them. It's
| common sense to let "the market decide" -- why not in this
| case?
| timeon wrote:
| > It's common sense to let "the market decide" -- why not
| in this case?
|
| Apple is the market here. If people wants to have PWAs they
| do not buy Apple products.
|
| But in reality "the market decide" is not common sense -
| that is why we have regulations.
| rimliu wrote:
| And they don't. How come Android still has apps that are
| not PWAs?
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Market decisions don't do anything to prevent the tragedy
| of the commons - is the general answer. I have mixed
| opinions on this specific case, but I absolutely see how
| this could make things worse. If everyone starts releasing
| their own versions, and not offering the apps in the App
| Store anymore, than the people who prefer the walled garden
| (for which there are good reasons to want) then they lose
| that choice. It's possible that doesn't happen - and
| allowing people that don't want the walled garden should
| also have that choice, but you can't simply boil this
| complex question down to "free market". It's intellectually
| dishonest, at best.
| mnd999 wrote:
| They won't have a choice. Low quality crap is cheaper to
| make so in a lot of cases that is all there will be.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Because markets sometimes fail so it pays to be sure if
| that would or wouldn't happen. How many Android customers
| choose an app based on its API? What is the quality of the
| Android store? Why would it work differently for an Apple
| Store?
| kiicia wrote:
| in this specific case its Google decision, not whole
| market, Google is usurping web space and web standards
| palata wrote:
| Counter-example: I don't want crappy ElectronJS apps, but I
| don't have a choice. Discord/Slack don't have an open API
| that would allow a good third-party client.
|
| If I don't like PWAs but WhatsApp stops supporting anything
| else, how can I use WhatsApp without the PWA?
| lxgr wrote:
| There are definitely too many crappy Electron apps out
| there, but at least WhatsApp have been working on a
| native macOS/iPad OS app for more than a year now. Last
| time I tried the beta, it wasn't really usable yet, but
| at least there is hope.
| palata wrote:
| Nice! I'm always happy when companies make real native
| apps (in that case Electron can be kept as a fallback)
| :-).
|
| What would be great would be for them to have some kind
| of API to let people write their own clients. Maybe there
| are big downsides with that (Loss of control? Having to
| keep backward compatibility?) but I don't really see
| them.
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| Games are an obvious example where platform UI conventions
| aren't applicable, and where Apple's restrictions hinder not
| just UX (see discoverability in the App Store) but also
| incentivise shitty monetisation practices.
|
| Gaming on mobile friggen sucks and that is primarily because
| Apple wants to retain control and the biggest piece of the
| pie.
|
| Gaming in mobile browsers, in 2023, should be as easily
| accessible as it were in desktop browser in the Flash days.
| Apple just won't come to the table to facilitate a decent
| gaming experience in Safari.
|
| Let's also not forget Steve Jobs was all for web standards in
| his letter against Flash. Apple should make good on what was
| promised in that letter instead of dragging their feet.
|
| https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-
| on-F...
| kiratp wrote:
| Gaming on mobile sucks because people voted with their $
| that they prefer free to download, micro transaction laden
| games.
| palata wrote:
| Are you trying to make the point that games would benefit
| from being web apps?
| colordrops wrote:
| No thanks, freedom of choice should surpass UX in importance
| here.
| tyingq wrote:
| Aren't there a lot of "native apps" that just launch a
| webview though?
| synecdoche wrote:
| Thanks, but no thanks. I prefer to make my own choice over
| others "care".
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Just some anecdata: I use the Outlook PWA (on an iPhone!) to
| access my work mail and calendar. It does not have
| notifications, which I really liked for calendar events
| (because I'm forgetful), so that's a bit sad. However, there
| is a decisive pro: It cannot enforce restrictive device
| policies. What a great feature!
|
| UX isn't half bad either. It actually feels pretty native
| most of the time.
| extra88 wrote:
| iOS 16.4 added notification support for websites added to
| the home screen, does Microsoft need to make a change to
| use it?
| alluro2 wrote:
| I see this argument often, but I'm genuinely curious if it's
| actually the case - at least in my experience, a huge amount
| of apps nowadays have custom-designed UIs and very little
| conformance to "platform UI conventions". And that's even an
| expectation - if you see an app that uses standard UI
| controls, navigation etc - it comes off as basic and probably
| not really polished. I might be completely wrong.
|
| On the other side, if users want standard UI and that's a
| factor in adoption, wouldn't people making PWAs then just
| make the apps in such a way - there's nothing stopping them,
| and there's no lack of UI libraries enabling that.
| palata wrote:
| > wouldn't people making PWAs then just make the apps in
| such a way
|
| I'd say look at popular cross-platform frameworks, and tell
| me if you think that cross-platform apps generally look
| native. I don't.
| iSnow wrote:
| "Users" don't fall in one bucket. Me, I do want some PWA's,
| not least because Apple's prudish stance disallows anything
| sexual or adult on the App store.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| OK, so let people choose. They'll consistently choose native
| apps and PWAs will become second class.
|
| It doesn't need Apple to white Knight on behalf of their
| poor, dim, uninformed users.
|
| Because they're not.
| palata wrote:
| Except if mainstream proprietary apps go to PWA. Just like
| I'm forced to use those damn ElectronJS apps. I wouldn't if
| I had a choice.
| IceWreck wrote:
| So you're saying Apple knows what I like and what I don't ?
|
| It should be my choice
| mnd999 wrote:
| Apple knows what they think is good. It turns out lots of
| people agree or they wouldn't be so successful.
|
| You have a choice, if you don't like it buy an Android
| phone. Or a Sailfish phone, or a KDE phone our one of the
| other open source phones where the only "apps" are low
| quality PWA crap. Look how successful they are.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| > You have a choice, if you don't like it buy an Android
| phone. Or a Sailfish phone, or a KDE phone our one of the
| other open source phones where the only "apps" are low
| quality PWA crap. Look how successful they are.
|
| Do you think that's because of PWA UX being inherently
| crappy and not, say, the fact that those projects don't
| have billion (or trillion) USD companies behind them? I
| think you're mistaking the effect for the cause.
|
| PWAs are a way of lowering the barrier of entry for new
| devs and that's important if you want to achieve any
| scale.
|
| > You have a choice
|
| It's kind of a like a thug saying that I have a choice
| between being slapped in the face, kicked in the butt or
| subscribing to his Twilight fanfic podcast. Yes, I do
| have a choice, but neither of the choices is really
| something I'm looking forward to. Betamax vs. VHS comes
| to mind too.
|
| I think the line of thinking in the parent comment is a
| bit naive. There's nothing inherently wrong with PWAs
| from the UX pov if we take monopolies and FUD into
| account. That's the reason it is harder to build a PWA
| with really good UX now (harder but not impossible).
| justeleblanc wrote:
| The fact that they're successful doesn't mean that
| they're right about every single decision they make. This
| kind of reasoning is inane.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I think the parent is mistaking the effect for the cause,
| and our choices as consumers are limited. Hence the
| choice often is the flavour of the lesser evil we're most
| comfortable with.
| Bendy wrote:
| Apple doesn't know what you want and neither do you. Apple
| makes you want.
|
| Nobody, least of all oneself, knows what one wants (except
| in the moment; I want some peanuts) so we have to be told.
| And you certainly do have a choice, so long as it's the
| right one.
| tolmasky wrote:
| The AppStore, in its current incarnation, almost certainly
| decreases security. And I mean this in a very concrete and
| demonstrable way. Apple on the one hand insists on touting the
| safety of the AppStore, and its reliance on app-review for this
| safety, to people (and Congress!),creating the reasonable
| expectation that if something has made it onto the AppStore,
| then it it's gone through this stringent analysis and should be
| considered safe by default.
|
| However, they then bizarrely and deliberately _refuse_ to
| actually police the store, to an alarming and almost
| cartooninsh level. We've seen this time and time again: scan
| apps remain on the store for months despite being reported.
| Take just last month when fake Authenticator apps flooded the
| AppStore to take advantage of Twitter getting rid of mobile
| phone based 2FA, and not only were those apps allowed on the
| store, but often managed to get _top recommendation_.
|
| At least on the web the expectation is that it's the wild west
| and you should be careful what you install. On the AppStore
| it's as if Apple has purposefully invested effort into creating
| the perfect mark for von artists: convincing their customers
| that a shark infested pool is totally safe to swim in.
|
| And this is the _undeniably bad stuff_ , it doesn't even touch
| on the "grey area" of these disgusting children's casino apps
| that dominate the AppStore, and that Apple _shares the profit
| on to the tune of 15-30%_. The incentives are all broken. Apple
| profits when scam apps buy ad-placement using real apps names
| for keywords. Apple profits from apps that convince kids to buy
| garbage IAP.
|
| It would be one thing if the AppStore actually lived up to its
| supposed principles, at the cost of hurting competition,
| innovation, and the occasional frustrating developer rejection.
| There's actually be a trade-off to discuss, and we'd actually
| be arguing about principles, and whether safety matters vs.
| freedom blah blah blah. Hell, as a parent, there's versions of
| a well managed AppStore that I'd probably begrudgingly
| accept.there be a "can't argue with the results" thinking
| there.
|
| But that's not what this is, and I'm tired of pretending toy is
| in arguments that defend the AppStore. It's been _15 years_ ,
| the AppStore isn't in beta, it's not "a work in progress",
| there's no room for arguing about its vision vs it's "current"
| reality. The AppStore has shown us what it actually is: a
| supremely lazy and un creative business cudgel that serves
| neither developers nor customers, and instead serves Apple
| first and ironically Apple competitors and criminals second.
| How does it serve Apple competitors you ask? Consider that
| companies like Amazon are offered special AppStore rates.
| Little developers don't get that, big companies do. So not only
| does the AppStore exhibit monopolistic behavior, it also props
| up other monopolies.
|
| Also, the search sucks and it's ugly. It feels like a free
| samples booth at a Costco. No one at Apple has any taste
| anymore. Not really relevant to the argument, but just want to
| point out there's zero to be proud of in that product.
| amelius wrote:
| I sometimes feel that some HN folks need to consider a job
| inside EU committees. It's probably boring work, but even if
| you spend 10% of your time in meetings and the remainder on a
| secret side project, you will be doing society a great service.
| timwis wrote:
| How would you recommend going about that?
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| [dead]
| KyeRussell wrote:
| This is a hilarious instance of the "I could build that in a
| weekend" mindset.
| tempodox wrote:
| Don't celebrate just yet, Apple will drag their feet and make
| this as painful as they possibly can for everyone involved.
| roamerz wrote:
| >>Apple being motivated by improving security are BS
|
| Their motivation is most definitely money now. Maybe not in the
| start though. Whatever their motives are though I'm super
| satisfied as a customer that they haven't went down the android
| path of version calamity, an app store that I have zero trust
| in as an app buyer. Also tell me an android flavor the supports
| devices purchased 6 years ago? It's a package deal. Having the
| wealth that is generated by the things that the EU has mandated
| will cause cuts in other areas of device support and/r&d. The
| option is making less profit or bumping prices to offset. In
| time we will see.
|
| I think it would be great of Apple to just stop selling devices
| in the EU as a thanks to politicians who voted for this ill
| advised rule. I'd like to see how long it would take for them
| to roll it back because you know they would eventually buckle
| to the people.
|
| To you and those of like thinking just assert your freedom of
| choice and go buy an android device along with the shit show it
| is and leave us to our relatively safe walled garden.
| pxoe wrote:
| >definitely money now
|
| wait, so it wasn't money before? when they ran all those ads
| and did all of that 'we're the only privacy company'
| marketing? i guess it worked really well. when some of it was
| kinda just, reframing of lacking features and capabilities,
| and their 'closed ecosystem/walled garden' structure, as
| 'more secure'.
| roamerz wrote:
| I think is was more about the customer in the Steve Jobs
| era. And honestly I'm glad money is a component of it now.
| A financially healthy Apple is a sign they are meeting the
| customer's needs. I bought into the ecosystem coming from
| Android for all the reasons stated. I honestly miss the
| ability to sideload apps and firmware but am willing to pay
| the walled garden price.
|
| If you don't like IOS in it's current form don't buy it but
| don't knowingly buy it knowing it's not what you want.
| Don't be the noisy spoiled 1% of our society and try and
| make the rest conform to your ideals. Go choose something
| else to ruin.
|
| If enough consumers vote with their wallet Apple will take
| notice. In this case that is the correct way to pursue
| change.
| Terretta wrote:
| A non-app-store web app on iPhone has been able to be full
| screen since initial release of Home Screen web apps. When you
| launch from Home Screen, it gets the whole screen.
|
| See the Xbox Cloud Gaming "app" for instance, which is outside
| the App Store, just launch then "Add to Home Screen", close,
| and run from Home Screen.
|
| https://www.xbox.com/en-us/play
|
| As for what can be done with browsers, see the venerable iCab
| but also Kagi's Orion browser which runs Firefox and Chrome
| extensions, even on iOS. Yes, it's WebKit based, but so was
| Chrome for a long time.
|
| https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/macos-extensi...
|
| Given you can run Xbox games or arbitrary extensions from other
| browsers, it's clear the web app and WebKit limits are less
| restrictive than most discussion acknowledges.
|
| For the last few features that used to be missing, like
| notifications or other native hooks, notice Microsoft has the
| sidecar native app for iOS that handles in-game chat, LAN
| discovery for Xbox setup, and notifications.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| For xcloud, the resolution is limited (by apple's streaming
| rules, and not by MS) so it's not as open as it looks.
| afavour wrote:
| To be clear you absolutely cannot run Xbox games in a web
| browser. The service you're talking about is just streaming
| video from a remote Xbox to the phone.
|
| You and the OP are both right about fullscreen. There is a
| web fullscreen API, which Apple does not support. However,
| PWAs strip out the browser UI so you're _effectively_
| fullscreen. Though you can't do anything about the status
| bar, nor can you lock screen orientation.
|
| But more to the original point, none of this has anything to
| do with security. Apple disallowed a native Xbox streaming
| app because they demanded a cut of the revenue and MS wasn't
| willing to give it.
| Terretta wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by strip out the browser UI.
|
| When home screen apps first came out we built some for
| clients and if I recall correctly, lack of browser UI was
| default.
| afavour wrote:
| Right, PWAs strip out the browser UI. We're in agreement.
|
| (it actually isn't by default, it requires specific flag,
| but it's more or less what everyone considers to be a
| standard for PWAs)
| arcticbull wrote:
| > There is a great tool to increase security: the browser and
| its sandbox. You don't need to install anything fishy on your
| phone, and the sandbox rights coukd be sufficient for many
| apps.
|
| To this day the browser is still a second-tier experience to
| native apps. But that's fine, because anything you get from the
| macOS and iOS app stores are sandboxed too. So are non-App
| Store apps on macOS that choose to run in sandbox.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > the browser and its sandbox.
|
| A lot of viruses (and jailbreaks on iOS amongst others) are
| distributed via this browser / sandbox; it's only secure in
| theory and it took decades to get to that point.
|
| Sure (before the Rust evangelists swoop in), part of that was
| due to using unsafe languages; part was due to extension
| frameworks that had too much power (ActiveX, which was even
| used to update your operating system, I can't fathom why they
| thought that was a good idea). But it'll take many more years
| of zero incidents, jailbreaks, etc before I'd trust the browser
| over Apple's app sandboxing and app review and distribution
| approach.
| stefan_ wrote:
| This is funny because by far the most impactful breaches of
| security on iOS phones have been due to the Apple components,
| like the messaging app that inexplicably is still written in
| ObjectiveC as it's ever been, or the image framework found to
| contain various bits of opensource code they never updated,
| never audited, or the various terrible magic "serialization"
| features.
|
| This Apple native crud they force every app to use (up to the
| whole browser engine, like in the IE days!) is truly the
| ActiveX of our times. Only you can't even get rid of it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Microsoft thought ActiveX was a good idea because they built
| Internet Explorer out of OLE and COM. Everything in that era
| of Windows was built to be embeddable and composable -
| "compound documents" being the original design goal. If you
| needed to stick, say, a video into a web page, COM/OLE was
| the obvious way to do that on Windows in 1996. It's not any
| different from, say, early Firefox extensions being built out
| of XUL - in fact, I recall XUL extensions for Firefox that
| would literally add ActiveX support back in. It wasn't until
| Chrome came along where extensions _didn 't_ get to muck
| about with browser internals.
|
| You can exploit in both native and browser contexts. Most
| jailbreaks nowadays are assisted by a native application that
| you dev-sign to deliberately pwn yourself with. In the past
| we had websites that you could use to jailbreak with. Both
| are sandboxed environments with significant attackable
| surface area, so one is not necessarily more trustworthy than
| the other purely on measures of exploitability.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| a bit of history massaging in this comment.
|
| Chrome and Firefox are as secure as Safari, if not more,
| banning them is a commercial choice not a technical one.
|
| iOS exploits still exist, there's no real advantage in Apple
| sandboxing apps, they are routinely leaking users data and
| being exploited as well.
|
| OTOH Apple refusing to implement certain web standards is
| proof that they cannot guarantee a safe implementation, which
| is a reason more to allow better browsers on their platform.
| xattt wrote:
| > Thank you, EU!!
|
| I think this plan will move forward because of consumer
| protections afforded in the EU (ie including sideloaded apps)
| not available elsewhere.
| PlutoIsAPlanet wrote:
| > And you cannot use a third party browser, since they forbid
| that (all are Safari based)
|
| I think this has turned out to be the current barrier in
| preventing Google from completing taking over the web standards
| space.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Apple's ban of all browsers but Safari turned out to be the
| main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being
| viable, deepening the duopoly power of themselves and Google,
| because Apple refuses to implement basic browser standards
| that are necessary for PWAs.
|
| And then when they do implement similar browser standards,
| they don't follow any web standards, they instead make their
| own proprietary bespoke web standard for Safari[1].
|
| And they also did other fun things like wait until nearly
| 2021 to support WebP and let Safari be the the #1 source of
| one-click exploits on iOS.
|
| It's weird to see Safari trotted out in defense of web
| standards of all things.
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-
| notifi...
| KyeRussell wrote:
| You're so dead set on "winning" that you've completely
| talked past the point that was being made.
|
| The commenter was not even saying that their point
| justifies Safari being the only browser engine available on
| iOS. They were making a specific point. If you don't want
| to talk to that point, maybe try another thread.
| smcleod wrote:
| I'd hate to see PWAs take hold - browser based apps are
| never as good on any platform. Give me native apps any day.
| brookst wrote:
| Depends on your priorities. For people into standards and
| commoditization, PWAs are awesome because they reduce the
| ability of HW makers to differentiate.
|
| For people who just want the best possible app/phone
| experiences, PWAs are awful.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| For lots of use cases, you'd be unlikely to notice a
| difference in quality. For example, I tune my guitar
| using a PWA, and I doubt anybody would notice the
| difference.
|
| The real differentiator with native vs pwa is their
| ability to track the user.
| brookst wrote:
| PWAS are pretty good for high frame rate games, then?
| SXX wrote:
| For years Google been stamping "standards" one after
| another even though other browser vendors were against many
| of them and they end up being Chrome-only.
|
| No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major non-
| Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing and
| having huge marketshare.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| How does Apple dragging their feet on implementing the
| Web Push notification standard, that is necessary for
| PWAs, in anyway help in that situation? Literally every
| browser except Safari implemented the the standard, and
| not out of some noble anti-Google crusade. PWAs threaten
| the App Store monopoly's moneyhose.
|
| How does Apple releasing proprietary web standards just
| for Safari, like Safari Push Notifications, help in
| anyway with the purported problem of companies stamping
| out web standards without consensus? It seems like it's
| only a problem when Google does it, but when Apple does
| it, it's Safari "helping Firefox just exist".
| threeseed wrote:
| Push notifications are now available in iOS.
|
| And so I will be looking forward to the magical era of
| PWAs replacing all mobile applications because clearly
| push notifications was what was holding them back all
| these years.
|
| Even though a tiny fraction of mobile apps use them but I
| guess we will ignore that.
| lxgr wrote:
| Every single airline app on my phone is there only
| because of push notifications (which work more reliably
| than texts when traveling internationally with different
| SIMs). The same goes for most food delivery apps.
| ryanianian wrote:
| Food delivery apps seem to immediately abuse any form of
| push notifications in order to send spam. Lyft uses the
| same push stream for both driver ETA and 10% off coupons.
| They are indeed more reliable than SMS, yet I turn them
| off almost as fast as apps start to use them.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Android provides hooks to filter notifications from apps,
| while iOS does not, making the notification experience
| far worse. Allowing web push lets you filter
| notifications in a browser extension instead.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Food delivery apps seem to immediately abuse any form
| of push notifications in order to send spam.
|
| Oh, definitely. But if they do (and don't at least give
| me a way to immediately opt out of that) the app is gone
| from my phone - and they have no other way of reaching
| me. Beats the absolute nightmare that is SMS
| notifications and spam, in my view.
| fzeindl wrote:
| Actually the iphone was planned to use PWAs in the start,
| but Steve Jobs switched to native apps after realizing
| that performance and usability was going to be poor.
|
| He was right and still is. Not that it's impossible to
| implement a good PWA, all you have to do is manage your
| state and interface in a way that no interaction takes
| longer than 50ms to compute. But most developers are not
| able to deliver than, most don't even think about UIs in
| this sort of way.
|
| And V8 GC behaviour is still terrible and an unbelievable
| battery hog.
| commoner wrote:
| > No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major
| non-Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing
| and having huge marketshare.
|
| That is incorrect because Apple has prevented and still
| prevents Firefox from properly implementing Gecko on iOS.
| Apple also restricts Firefox and browsers other than
| Safari from implementing full WebExtensions. Even though
| Firefox and browsers other than Safari are required to
| use WebKit on iOS, they are not allowed to access many of
| WebKit's iOS-integrated features including content
| blockers and Safari extensions.
|
| All of these Apple-imposed handicaps make Firefox a much
| less competitive browser on iOS than it could be, and in
| no way helps Firefox because users generally prefer to
| use the same browser across their devices. The EU's
| upcoming browser choice legislation will prohibit Apple's
| anticompetitive restrictions to put Firefox on a more
| level playing field with Safari on iOS.
| rektide wrote:
| It's a three player world now, and Google wants a better
| web, Apple doesn't want a better web, and Mozilla is
| somewhere in-between, but increasingly playing the
| "privacy above all else" card too.
|
| In June 2020, Apple declared a bunch of APIs they will
| not implement (https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-
| declined-to-implement-16...), in a big press blitz trying
| to make it look like they were some noble hero. Web MIDI
| (incredible fun), Web USB (very useful for Arduino using
| folk for example, who have excellent web-based tools),
| Magnetometer/Ambient Light/Battery/Proximity sensors,
| WebHID, Device Memory, and that's just the half. A week
| latter Mozilla put out a similar PR using the exact same
| Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) to try to make
| themselves look good, to declare themselves virtuous non-
| implementors.
|
| Sure, I agree, not every site should have access to these
| sensors/capabilities. There are privacy risks of turning
| them on. But they're also excellent capabilities, that
| really help users do interesting things. Making users use
| less-secure less-sandboxed native apps is a downgrade.
| There should be some security regimes where these web
| techs can be permitted.
|
| For a while Mozilla wasn't even reviewing a sizable chunk
| of web standards (tracked via the excellent
| https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/), just
| declaring them unsafe & leaving the convo. They've at
| least started going back to old Request for Positions &
| reviewing a good number of them, even if they don't
| intend to implement. And there's a good number of
| standards they have about-faced on, have accepted as real
| asks. In general, I'm encouraged in seeing a much more
| interested & engaged & progressive Mozilla emerge quite
| recently, within the past year or so.
|
| I don't know what to do about web standards. Google takes
| a lot of flak, but who is there to work with? Edge, a
| Chromium fork, has some pro-web attitude, and indeed
| drives some new features for Chromium & participates. But
| there's largely no one but Google+Edge to deal with left
| in the web standards implementer world. The other browser
| vendors are broadly against a lot of features, for
| reasons of malicious-self-interest. Meanwhile Chrome
| continues to have one of the most open, progressive,
| interactive, review-seeking, concensus-desiring, most
| mature & responsible feature-lifecycle processes the
| world has ever seen. There is nothing else on the planet
| that gets shipped with such a high bar, such a socially
| pro-active, such a well planned & democratic process for
| how the feature gets developed. It's the _gold standard_
| of _standards._ https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-
| features/#launch-pr...
| achenet wrote:
| Do you work for Google?
| rektide wrote:
| No. They didn't get back to me in 2006 after I submitted
| a pretty cool coding challenge project to them as a part
| of interviewing, & we've had no contact to my knowledge
| since.
|
| They did support me in Google Summer of Code before that
| (2005). I believe they gave me $5000 for the summer. I am
| still working to ship open source software pursuant to
| those ends, on my own personal time, to this day.
| palata wrote:
| > Google wants a better web
|
| Really? I believe that they want to control the web.
| rektide wrote:
| What I see is a lot of very sincere dedicated engineers
| coming up with helpful & rich ideas. Web Engineers seem
| to have _enormous_ power to suggest & follow & drive
| forward ideas they seem to think are interesting. I see
| very few hallmarks signs of top down control. I see far
| more individual folks promoting & driving ideas, with
| blink-dev as a great testament to that bottom-up
| engineering spirit/mentality.
|
| Which of these Standards do you think Google will use to
| "control the web"? https://mozilla.github.io/standards-
| positions/
|
| There's been an unmitigated use of Fear Uncertainty &
| Doubt, played with _great_ effectiveness, against the top
| player. People keep ascribing to Google the role of
| platform-controller, like literally everyone else in
| history has done: IBM, Apple, Microsoft, all of which
| have used OSes to maintain control & dominance. Google
| is a search engine; they benefit from a rich healthy
| powerful competitive web. If Google did have "control"
| over the web, what would they do? What's the evil
| mastermind plan here?
|
| Everything Google does goes through the Technical
| Architecture Group (TAG) and Security review. It's all
| open process. The checks are very real; even if no one
| can prevent them from implementing it would look very bad
| to disregard feedback, and thusfar they have not. Thusfar
| there seem to be extremely few examples of actual real
| scary things done. Web MIDI shipping without permissions
| was the most "egg on face" thing Google's done, and I
| have a hard time interpreting that as malicious. It has
| the hallmark of naively hopeful to me, and was easy
| enough to address.
|
| The desire to see the browser teams as the enemy, as a
| foe, is a greatly harmful & reductive and alas popular
| outlook in my view. I don't think it's warranted, I don't
| think there's real evidence for it, and I stress again,
| Google has so far set the gold-standard for web standards
| accountability. They wouldn't have done that, they
| wouldn't continue that process, if they wanted to take
| control. The case here for taking-over seems absurd, has
| no clear outcome & only risk. Taking control is an
| existential risk, would jeopardize the web's success,
| could easily kill the Golden Goose that has made Google
| so wealthy & wise. People's fear here does not make
| business sense.
| SXX wrote:
| > If Google did have "control" over the web, what would
| they do? What's the evil mastermind plan here?
|
| Might be they'll replace actual websites with Google own
| version to keep people in Google controlled ecosystem?
|
| Or change APIs in their own nearly-monopolistic browser
| to make ad-blockers less efficient?
|
| Or not implement extensions in their own browser so there
| are no ad-blockers at all?
|
| Or push their user tracking system disguised as solution
| to increase privacy?
|
| Or degrade quality of Google services when using
| competeting browsers?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| > Might be they'll replace actual websites with Google
| own version to keep people in Google controlled
| ecosystem?
|
| This just shows that you don't understand AMP. Apple News
| replaces websites with only Apple News. AMP allows
| _anybody_ to host the article.
|
| > Or change APIs in their own nearly-monopolistic browser
| to make ad-blockers less efficient.
|
| Only one browser has done this so far. It's Safari.
|
| Google might not be a good actor, but trading it for a
| worse actor who won't let you use any other web clients
| is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.
| palata wrote:
| > What's the evil mastermind plan here?
|
| Make money? That's what companies do. When they get too
| big and too powerful (at the point where governments
| don't really have serious leverage over them), a third-
| party should probably split them.
|
| > Taking control is an existential risk
|
| Why do you think big companies open source code? To help
| humanity? If Android (AOSP) was not open source, OEMs
| would probably not take the risk of depending on it. But
| the Play Services are there for the lock-in. Protobuf
| being open source is better for Google than having to
| integrate with other systems out there. Why is Chromium
| open source? Well most "alternative" browsers are based
| on it, and Google controls it. And so on. Open sourcing
| code is a strategic decision. And the strategic decisions
| in a company are there to make more money, not to help
| the world. It's all about control.
|
| > What I see is a lot of very sincere dedicated engineers
| coming up with helpful & rich ideas.
|
| Sure. Because you work for Evil Corp does not mean you
| are not sincere and dedicated. Many good people work for
| Philip Morris, for many reason (maybe they have an
| interesting job, maybe good conditions, whatever the
| reason). The difference with Google is that most Philip
| Morris employees probably realize that their company is
| not a non-profit aiming at making the world a better
| place.
| pnpnp wrote:
| It's just too bad that "sincere and dedicated" Google
| engineers are seemingly more and more beholden to their
| corporate overlords.
|
| Google has been putting profit over users' best interests
| for a very long time now.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > and Google wants a better web
|
| [Citation needed]
|
| > Magnetometer/Ambient Light/Battery/Proximity sensors
| [...] Device Memory,
|
| I don't have words to describe what a shockingly bad idea
| this is.
|
| > A week latter Mozilla put out a similar PR using the
| exact same Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) to try to
| make themselves look good, to declare themselves virtuous
| non-implementors.
|
| Maybe because it's a really fucking stupid idea, and the
| criticism of those APIs is not FUD.
| kiicia wrote:
| you seem to be completely sure that everyone loves and
| wants pwa
|
| newsflash: many users hate pwa, they prefer native apps
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Most users don't know WTF a PWA is, let alone have an
| opinion of them.
| palata wrote:
| Nope, but many users will tell you that they like iOS
| better because it's "easier to use" or it "looks better"
| than, e.g. Android.
|
| And that's most certainly because Apple enforces more UX
| consistency on iOS apps.
| kazinator wrote:
| Google breaks consistency and wrecks the user experience
| with each successive Android release.
| palata wrote:
| Right. But that's a point in favor of Apple ensuring
| consistency on their platform, isn't it?
| kazinator wrote:
| Or a else point in favor of Apple getting complacent and
| doing dumb things with their platform too.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Why? Most of those """native""" apps are a pile of HTML
| and JS anyways.
| palata wrote:
| I hate PWAs not because I like shitty native apps (it
| seems like it's not obvious, somehow).
|
| I hate PWAs because I like good native apps, and PWAs
| give an opportunity for developers to replace their
| native app with a cross-platform web app. And in my
| experience, cross-platform generally comes at the cost of
| app quality on a single platform. Instead of hiring
| developers who know iOS, you now hire web developers who
| debug their web app on many platforms they don't really
| know well.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Someone's dislike of PWAs is irrelevant to whether or not
| someone else should be able to use them if they want to.
| It's also irrelevant when it comes to users who want to
| benefit from competition in the app distribution market.
| If you don't like PWAs, you're free to not use them, and
| you're even free to benefit from the improvements their
| competition brings to the whole mobile software
| ecosystem.
|
| It's also ironic to bring up Apple's hindering of web
| standards as evidence of anti-monopolization of
| standards, considering the fact that the lack of PWA
| support forces users to use the proprietary App Store
| monopoly to install apps instead.
| palata wrote:
| > If you don't like PWAs, you're free to not use them,
| and you're even free to benefit from the improvements
| their competition brings to the whole mobile software
| ecosystem.
|
| IMHO, that's very naive. Look at ElectronJS apps. I hate
| ElectronJS, still the most used apps on my Desktop
| computer are ElectronJS. Why? Because I don't have a
| choice, because it's cheaper for the developers.
|
| Before ElectronJS, I actually had real desktop apps. So
| yeah, I see the case against PWAs.
| locustous wrote:
| > I hate ElectronJS
|
| Then you should support PWA as an alternative. It's
| lighter weight, both lower memory and download size,
| compared to electron.
| palata wrote:
| Better: I could stay in favour of keeping actual native
| apps on mobile, in Kotlin/Swift :-)
| locustous wrote:
| Well, vote with your time and money.
|
| PWAs would be cheaper to develop overall than building
| 2-3 separate code bases. Which would mean more software
| available generally, particularly from bootstrapped
| companies.
|
| I don't think anyone is suggesting that native go away.
| palata wrote:
| > PWAs would be cheaper to develop overall than building
| 2-3 separate code bases.
|
| But that's my point: that's exactly the promise of every
| single cross-platform system out there. But in my
| experience, that's generally not true for non-trivial
| apps (ever heard "write once, debug everywhere"?). And
| second, it usually makes for worse UX on all platforms.
|
| I feel like many people consider PWAs as a totally new
| thing, but at the end of the day, it's a cross-platform
| system. There are tons of those; just look around, cross-
| platform is not a silver bullet.
| [deleted]
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| newsflash to your newsflash: most ,,native" apps are lazy
| wrappers around shitty webviews anyway.
| curt15 wrote:
| My rule of thumb is that for any application that relies
| on an internet connection for most of its functionality,
| I'd rather just use a real web browser.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| My banking application is like this, and the irony is
| that it's kinda sorta second factor to their browser UI,
| so I've got to live with it.
| threeseed wrote:
| > turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive
| web apps from being viable
|
| Until the issue is fixed and the goal posts are moved once
| again.
|
| Because PWAs have been available in one form or another for
| 14 years.
|
| And it's always because that the UX is terrible that makes
| them not viable not anything Apple has done.
| locustous wrote:
| > And it's always because that the UX is terrible that
| makes them not viable not anything Apple has done.
|
| Obvious counter points.
|
| Lots of people use websites. Which have an identical UX
| experience to PWAs.
|
| A significant percentage of the app store is web view
| based apps that are near equivalents to PWAs. Been that
| way for years.
|
| If people love native so much, why do sites like Reddit
| and LinkedIn heavily push mobile web users to the app?
| Seems it's not a universal opinion.
| chalst wrote:
| > If people love native so much, why do sites like Reddit
| and LinkedIn heavily push mobile web users to the app?
|
| Because that's how sites can avoid the privacy features
| that are inherent to browsers.
|
| What proportion of visitors to the LinkedIn site use the
| app? I'm guessing it's pretty small.
| locustous wrote:
| I don't like installing apps I don't have to. I agree
| that the browser sandbox is superior.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > I think this has turned out to be the current barrier in
| preventing Google from completing taking over the web
| standards space.
|
| "I used the monopoly to destroy the monopoly."
| Matl wrote:
| Is Apple a significant player in proposing new standards and
| working with say Mozilla to get consensus as a genuine
| alternative to Google or are they simply not implementing
| much? The latter is certainly my impression.
| lxgr wrote:
| That may well be true, but in my view, upholding a native app
| monopoly for the sake of preventing a web browser one isn't a
| sustainable strategy (and never has been a conscious choice
| by anyone).
| tonmoy wrote:
| Are you sure PWA doesn't work on iOS? I remember installing
| websites as apps on my iPhone. According to this SO answer I
| think one can even make it full screen (with a workaround at
| least): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53061258/pwa-not-
| opening...
| loganwedwards wrote:
| I "installed" drop.com as a PWA on my iPhone. It gets full
| screen real estate and a launcher icon.
| exabrial wrote:
| PWAs and SPAs are awful. And to think they're not downloading
| and executing code is foolish. There is no memory model for a
| browser. Each browser implants is sandbox however it wants.
| voytec wrote:
| > Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it
| pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or
| reapeating this.
|
| It's the same with privacy. Forcing app publishers to state
| what user data is being sucked out of their phones was just a
| poor PR stunt.
|
| Nothing has changed. Applications still require payments in
| form of contact lists (which is more or less illegal in Europe
| if you don't have permission of all people in your address book
| to share their names and phone numbers), disguised as helping
| users check if their friends are using a service, or to even
| allow user to use some app functionality.
|
| Unimaginative accountant that currently leads Apple on one hand
| bullshits public opinion when disallowing Facebook to steal
| data from users' devices and, on the other hand, after blocking
| Zuckerberg's ability to do so, he disgracefully used children
| protection to announce that Apple will now inspect users' data
| under the pretense of looking for child porn.
|
| Apple users are being deprived of OS control with most of
| updates and it's always done under the untruthful pretense of
| increasing security or protecting users' privacy.
|
| When this little man finally pushes ads to core macOS, he'll
| state that it's to help users.
| s3p wrote:
| >Applications still require payments in form of contact lists
|
| What? It seems like you were trying to make a coherent
| argument but a list of contacts is in no way comparable to a
| paid subscription. Microsoft doesn't allow you to buy O365
| with your contacts, do they?
| voytec wrote:
| No, but some apps require this to unlock functionality. I
| consider it a form of payment, just like apps sucking up
| data from one's phone being a form of non-financial payment
| for an app disguised as "free".
| augment003 wrote:
| > It's the same with privacy. Forcing app publishers to state
| what user data is being sucked out of their phones was just a
| poor PR stunt.
|
| > Nothing has changed. Applications still require payments in
| form of contact lists
|
| This is actually proof that users don't make good choices
| when it comes to privacy and security even when they have the
| necessary information.
| voytec wrote:
| True, but majority of users, not all of them.
|
| On the other hand, there's little non privacy-invasive apps
| of certain types and corporations make good use of users'
| inability to pick lesser evil.
|
| App Store helps them a lot, too, because to see what
| invasive practices developer/publisher uses, one has to
| click on app title to see details, while having a very
| comfortable "GET" button as the only button and only thing
| that looks clickable on the list.
|
| Cook's typical smoke and mirrors approach.
| augment003 wrote:
| [dead]
| tim333 wrote:
| >Apple being motivated by improving security are BS
|
| I'm not sure how they are motivated but in a report Apple
| cited:
|
| >In Nokia's 2021 threat intelligence report, Android devices
| made up 50.31% of all infected devices, followed by Windows
| devices at 23.1%, and macOS devices at 9.2%. iOS devices made
| up a percentage so small as to not even be singled out, being
| instead bucketed into "other".
|
| I personally use iOS and got it for my mum and aunt etc as it
| seems to suffer much less from malware in normal usage. I'm not
| sure if there is any evidence to the contrary?
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| If you want to continue to browse this website, please download
| MetaBrowse from the Meta Store.
| pongo1231 wrote:
| You are free to not browse the website just as I am free to not
| purchase an iPhone.
| elisaado wrote:
| This has not happened on Android and it will not happen on iOS.
| iamnotsure wrote:
| What if Apple registered a religion with apps qualifying as pages
| of holy scriptures, should then they be allowed to have their
| walled gardens?
| Aeolun wrote:
| That's dissapointing. Can I get the european firmware installed
| on my device then?
| marinhero wrote:
| The feature will likely be tied to an European Apple ID which
| means you'll need an European credit card in order to make this
| work.
| irusensei wrote:
| You can pay using euro debit card from wise.
| mattl wrote:
| Or buy a phone directly from Europe?
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| I wonder how the apple store operates in the EU on devices that
| have sideloaded apps. Theres a bunch of liability apple can
| effectively shift to the end user everytime without question
| "sorry you sideloaded this app which may have given your malware,
| we cant help you". It's ridiculous i know but also seems
| plausible.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's fine, as long as they stick to the hardware warranty
| requirements as spelled out in the law.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| [dead]
| hooby wrote:
| I think the central question here is:
|
| .) whether you buy a phone as a piece of hardware and then own
| that hardware - which gives you certain rights regarding the
| usage of that owned hardware
|
| or
|
| .) whether you are just paying some sort of admission fee to a
| tightly controlled service, and are basically "lent" a piece of
| hardware that you have no ownership rights over.
|
| All the other stuff about walled gardens, monopolies and security
| is related - but still acts as a red herring when discussing what
| rights a person should get for a piece of hardware they bought.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Yes. The HN crowd is overcomplicating the issue, and Apple has
| as much a right as an individual to design their platform as
| they wish. We like to talk about giving businesses the freedom
| to build the products that they want and keeping regulators out
| of the picture and instead letting people vote with their
| money, yet when people actually vote with their money to buy
| Apple products precisely for how they are built, we want to
| regulate the crap out of the company. It doesn't make sense.
| matsemann wrote:
| How can you "vote with your money" in these cases? Most of
| the problems here stem from Apple misusing their monopoly
| against other app makers. Only indirectly harming consumers.
|
| For instance, when purchasing a music subscription through an
| apple device, they receive 30% and the developer 70%. Apple
| have their own competing service where they make 100%. This
| makes it impossible for others to compete on equal terms,
| hence you as a consumer probably see less choice than you
| could have.
| pjerem wrote:
| I disagree. The mobile OS market is just not open and big
| enough to vote with my money.
|
| I don't buy iPhones because I like being unable to side load
| apps. I miss it a lot.
|
| The point is that when I make my list of pros and cons of
| buying Android vs iOS, I still prefer iOS because, as much as
| I dislike Apple commercial policies and artificial lock-ins,
| I just loathe Google for what they are.
|
| And don't even call me some sort of "fanboy", I've used and
| loved Android as an OS since basically the first versions.
|
| It's just that iOS have a quantity of advantages I'm not
| willing to lose by going back to Android and that there are
| basically no alternative platform to run apps on.
| wruza wrote:
| _iOS have a quantity of advantages I'm not willing to lose
| by going back_
|
| What are these?
| criddell wrote:
| Putting aesthetics aside, iOS has a better app ecosystem
| and part of that is driven by Apple hardware (including
| having fewer devices to support) and software advantages.
| For example, I've read that the iOS audio stack has lower
| latency. If you like GarageBand, then you aren't going to
| want to go back to Androi because there's nothing as
| good.
|
| The integration with Apple desktop computers is pretty
| compelling as well. It's part of the reason I wish
| Microsoft would buy Android from Google. I think they
| would do something similar for the rest of us.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| I recently got an iPhone and I still don't understand the
| integration bit. If you don't use iMessage (everyone here
| uses Messenger, Telegram or Signal), barely make phone
| calls, use OneDrive for cloud storage (because it's way
| cheaper than iCloud), and use BitWarden for passwords
| there isn't really anything left. I guess being able to
| AirDrop a file is nice? But then also my Macbook and my
| iPhone have different chargers so from a hardware PoV
| they're less integrated. Is there anything I'm missing
| here?
| timeon wrote:
| Sorry for the analogy but this reminds me joke about the
| guy who replaced all ingredients in recipe and then said:
| "I do not get what is so special about this food".
| criddell wrote:
| Lots of users (especially in the US) do the things you
| don't do. They use iCloud, talk on the phone, and use
| Keychain and iMessage. They use Safari on both platforms
| and the features that let you send stuff back and forth
| easily. If they have an iPad some even use Sidecar which
| lets you use the iPad from your Mac.
| pjerem wrote:
| I don't need to argue about this. Those are my personal
| preferences and that was not my point.
|
| My whole point was that you are limited to only two
| platforms. So choosing one doesn't mean that you accept
| all of its disadvantages.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > and Apple has as much a right as an individual to design
| their platform as they wish.
|
| Well, no, actually they don't. The EU just passed a law
| mandating competition on platforms when it comes to store
| because as often in a duopoly the ability of people to vote
| with their money is significantly limited. That decidedly
| solves this question.
| wvenable wrote:
| I see no moral issue with government regulation to make our
| lives better.
|
| People would still buy cars if seatbelts weren't a standard
| feature. They'd still by deodorant if it put holes in the
| ozone.
|
| Vote with their money only works if companies make a product
| you can buy. Where's the iPhone "unlocked edition" that costs
| $20 more that I can buy? They don't make it.
| wruza wrote:
| $appliancevendorname also doesn't make +$20 programmable
| washers. Arguments like this only appear when there's an
| urge for an argument. Just buy an unlocked android phone,
| they exist with similar or better hw for $500 less.
| 221qqwe wrote:
| Technically there is no Android phone which has a better
| CPU/GPU than the latest iPhones. Not that it matters too
| much nowadays...
| charcircuit wrote:
| iPhones are behind on including ray tracing acceleration
| in their soc.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| I mean, even desktops can barely do raytracing so I
| wouldn't hold my breath on phone SoCs being able to do it
| competently for a while. Also, afaik there is no high-
| profile game that uses the RT cores on newer Snapdragons.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| The damage the App Store causes is far, far wider than
| iOS users. The entire online ecosystem is shaped by app
| store censorship - we've seen again and again massive
| sites actively discrimate against kink, BDSM and queer
| communities because Apple requires to do so, and building
| different moderation for different end user devices is
| effectively impossible at scale.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| We aren't overcomplicating the issue. The premise of this
| question is wrong, and you like it because it has a very
| obvious "winning side", which happens to be the "side" that
| you're on.
| baby wrote:
| Related question: what does the user want? I doubt a majority
| of users are against side loading.
| sbuk wrote:
| "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said
| faster horses." attributed to Henry Ford.
|
| While listening to feedback is not a bad thing, design by
| focus group rarely works out well. You risk ending up with
| things like this https://i.imgur.com/IoPkza2.png! While this
| is obviously a joke, it does contain grains of truth.
|
| The other problem with this argument is how the question is
| framed? Are the majority of users armed with all the facts
| and details? While I'd agree many are overstating the issues,
| there are equally as many dismissing any issues out of hand.
| IMHO, it behooves any one suggesting what "the majority" want
| to at least do a thought experiment around the pro's and
| con's and be honest about what they are. We cannot have this
| here, sadly. This should extend to any government that are
| enforcing something like this to _transparently_ lay out the
| pros and cons and maybe accept some of the liability. That
| though, is asking too much of politicians...
| baby wrote:
| I feel like the Ford quote is about new products, whereas
| the current situation is about preventing the user from
| having more power.
|
| The pros and cons are already quantifiable on Android.
| meling wrote:
| I don't think users really want to have to use 5 different
| app stores. I'll probably opt to not buy an app if I first
| have to download another App Store app.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| That's not the case for billions of people on Android or
| macOS and their respective app stores.
| Nursie wrote:
| How many people actually bother to set up another App
| Store though?
|
| A subset of Kindle users who want "real" google apps?
|
| I very much doubt it's billions.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| That's my point, Android can have more than one app store
| running yet people choose to use one primary app store.
| The nightmare scenario of having to run multiple app
| stores that the OP seems to be scared of is a non-issue
| on platforms with multiple app stores.
| Nursie wrote:
| Sure, but it also pours cold water on the idea of having
| alternative app stores in the first place.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| I wouldn't say so. Let power users have their iPhone
| equivalent of F-Droid or Aurora Store if they care while
| most users will just use the default App Store. I
| personally download apps off the Play Store as a last
| resort if they don't work on the former two.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| In Android you don't even need an App Store to install an
| app. All you need is to find an apk and download it. And
| providing an apk is exactly what many vendors do.
| baby wrote:
| I can't imagine a single scenario where your comment would
| be anything else than FUD. Nice try Tim Apple.
| walls wrote:
| It's the state of desktop gaming already, why would it
| not happen on phones once the only barrier has been
| removed? Epic has been itching to use their own app store
| for years.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| On the one hand it is annoying but on the other it
| actually promotes competition and Epic tries their damn
| best to get users on their platform with deals and free
| games. I also feel like in response the Steam sales have
| stepped it up a notch recently compared to the absolute
| snoozefest they were 2-3 years ago.
| criddell wrote:
| I doubt a majority of users want side loading. It's available
| on Android and very few (relatively speaking) take advantage
| of that feature.
| baby wrote:
| I disagree. It depends on how you ask the question. "Do you
| want want to be able to install apps that will have more
| features/allow you to purchase directly (kindle app), or
| provide cheaper prices (twitter blue), or cover more
| usecases (crypto wallets), or offer different browsing
| experiences (real chrome/firefox), etc."
| criddell wrote:
| Do you disagree that relatively few Android users
| sideload?
| yreg wrote:
| I'm not sure what I want. I'm not against sideloading, but I
| very much like how Apple forces the developers to comply to
| their rules*.
|
| I don't want to download Instagram from Meta store where
| anything goes. (And yes, perhaps someone is going to tell me
| to simply not use Instagram. But I _want_ to use Instagram, I
| just want to do it on terms that Apple negotiates for me.)
|
| *ofc I don't agree with 100% of their rules (especially the
| way they split revenue), but I'm mostly happy with them.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| While that might be the choice we're making and it seems like
| the first is obviously what owning a device _should_ be like.
|
| What if I actually want to pay a fee to a tightly controlled
| service? Like what if I do the math and determine that that
| benefits me more than actually owning the device? Should a
| regulatory agency be able to come in and tell this tightly
| controlled service they aren't doing it right when I am a happy
| customer?
|
| > when discussing what rights a person should get for a piece
| of hardware they bought.
|
| You already pre-decided that the first answer is correct
| without actually asking if anyone prefers the second.
| atoav wrote:
| > What if I actually want to pay a fee to a tightly
| controlled service? Like what if I do the math and determine
| that that benefits me more than actually owning the device?
| Should a regulatory agency be able to come in and tell this
| tightly controlled service they aren't doing it right when I
| am a happy customer?
|
| I think the default should be protection. Just like it is
| okay for a BDSM-scene to exist where people inflict
| consensual pain onto each other -- the default must still be
| to protect the individual's right to bodily autonomy and
| protection from harm -- even if some people, sometimes opt to
| waiver these rights
|
| Signing away those rights should always remain a special case
| and not the default. Same for ownership rights, because if
| the only choice is leasing, ownership ceases to exist. While
| when ownership exists you could still easily enter a lease.
| hooby wrote:
| No, the second is perfectly fine.
|
| I pay a monthly fee for internet - and that's the admission
| fee I have to pay to access the service. And I get sent a
| modem/router - a piece of hardware - that I don't own, but
| that's only being lent to me.
|
| Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
| zamnos wrote:
| Are other devices allowed on the network though? If your
| want to rent your modem, that's your perogative. But I
| don't want to rent my modem. And AT&T being a convicted
| monopolist set precedent that means they actually are _not_
| allowed to stop me from using my own hardware. And if I 'm
| using my own hardware, I don't need to rent their modem,
| which means I don't need to pay their modem rental fee.
| hooby wrote:
| > Are other devices allowed on the network though?
|
| By default yes - but I can switch that to only allowing
| devices I whitelisted through the web interface. It's not
| full admin rights - but for my purpose it's sufficient.
|
| > If your want to rent your modem, that's your
| perogative. But I don't want to rent my modem. And AT&T
| being a convicted monopolist set precedent that means
| they actually are not allowed to stop me from using my
| own hardware. And if I'm using my own hardware, I don't
| need to rent their modem, which means I don't need to pay
| their modem rental fee.
|
| I agree that "bring your own modem" should be fully
| allowed (and obviously free of any rental fee - not that
| I'm paying any, the modem/router comes pretty much free
| with the contract).
| hayst4ck wrote:
| So apple is actually guilty of false marketing?
|
| So if apple accepts returns for their products for a
| reasonable amount of time, you don't really have a problem?
|
| You definitely wouldn't buy a second iPhone either since
| now you understand what an iPhone is, when you didn't
| before?
|
| What you're saying is your core problem with an iPhone is
| not structural, but semantic?
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Then Apple should have to call it "Subscribe to iPhone " or
| "Gain admission to iPhone" or "Use iPhone" - but not "Buy
| iPhone" as they very much do. If you buy a piece of hardware,
| you buy a piece of hardware.
| walls wrote:
| So you're also not buying an Xbox, Playstation, Switch,
| etc. right?
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| With Xboxes you have dev mode so you are definitely
| buying the Xbox. The Switch technically doesn't have a
| web browser so I wouldn't define it as a general-purpose
| computing device. The PS5 should definitely get a dev
| mode like the Xbox, otherwise while it can do general
| computing tasks like email, messaging, document editing
| by plugging in a mouse and a keyboard and you can't run
| your own code on it then you don't own it and are simply
| leasing it.
| kiratp wrote:
| IPhones can have apps pushed to them exactly like Xbox
| dev mode.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| You own the hardware. You're welcome to keep it on your
| shelf indefinitely; give it away; set it on fire. You're
| absolutely free to run your own software on it. Go ahead.
| Oh, you can't? You don't have the skills? The manufacturer
| made it difficult for you? The hardware prevents you? Too
| bad; if you wanted different hardware maybe you should have
| bought different hardware. _Caveat emptor_.
| wvenable wrote:
| The hardware and software, in any device, should not be so
| inextricably linked as to prevent the hardware from working at
| all without the software. Regardless of whether we are taking
| about iPhones, computers, cars, or farm equipment.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Remember, in the US at least, you might own the physical
| hardware, but you're only _licensing_ the software.
| chenzhekl wrote:
| But it is way too hard to cleanly separate the hardware from
| the software without introducing extra complexity and
| security issues.
| wvenable wrote:
| How so? The iPhone is literally just a computer and the
| vast majority of computers are cleanly separate from their
| software.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| That's baloney - virtually no computers these days are
| "cleanly separate" from their software, at least outside
| of tiny microcontrollers. Do you have any idea how much
| software executes before they even get to the point where
| the operating system beings to boot?
|
| The idea that a CPU is going to come out of reset and
| start executing instructions that you provide at the
| reset vector is thirty years out of date.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| Now that you mention it, I wonder what non-separable code
| would run on, say, a Corebooted Thinkpad running Linux
| with the Intel ME disabled. Surely that would be running
| 100% code that was not on it when it left the factory.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| AFAIK, even fastidiously "liberated" core/libreboot
| Thinkpads like
| https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-t440p/ still end
| up using Intel's memory-reference-code for DRAM training
| etc.
|
| ref. https://doc.coreboot.org/northbridge/intel/haswell/m
| rc.bin.h...
|
| ... plus Intel's microcode.
| hooby wrote:
| Is it though?
|
| Looking at Linux and all the devices it powers (including
| most of the internet infrastructure) - it would seem that
| it is possible to do pretty good security on very open
| software that's as separate from the hardware as can be.
| sbuk wrote:
| That has more to do with boundary defence than the OS
| itself, and those are more-often-than-not closed. The
| majority of infrastructure that you are alluding to is
| also heavily locked-down.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Now you're saying that--I as somebody that very much
| appreciates the advantages my...for instance...Apple
| Silicon MacBook Pro has over a ThinkPad running Ubuntu--
| should not have the right to purchase the product I like
| because of your ideology dictating arbitrary restrictions
| over what's on the market.
|
| Don't conflate user freedom with just...being salty that
| not every product is for you.
| Nursie wrote:
| I don't think it's accurate to say you are conferred no
| ownership in the current model - this reads as typical tech
| binary thinking.
|
| It's either fully under my control or I have nothing!
|
| For most people the ownership aspect is covered by being able
| to buy and sell the devices freely, and decide what apps to put
| on them.
|
| They are (and before I'm accused of being patronising, I am in
| this group) happy with a device that is capable but more or
| less on rails and has the sort of security provided by third
| party vetting. And we don't care at all that it's the device
| vendor doing it.
|
| I get the arguments about monopolies and the whole thing being
| damaging to business, which is in the end damaging to consumer
| choice.
|
| But honestly "I should be able to do whatever I want at all
| layers of the stack on my phone" is _waaaay_ down the priority
| list compared to "I want a secure device that does bank stuff,
| generates tokens and whatever else without me having to be
| vigilant like I am on an open system".
|
| So to me the rights argument is the red herring.
|
| And yes, "choice" quickly becomes an avenue of exploitation for
| the less tech savvy.
| bjornsing wrote:
| I agree. Legal ownership rights do not guarantee a particular
| feature set. For example your ownership of a car does not
| entail a right to easily install whatever software you want
| on all the CPUs in it.
|
| But I don't think it's right to call this binary thinking.
| It's just incorrect thinking.
| DCKing wrote:
| Is that the central question?
|
| Most people using Android or Apple's very own macOS today use
| their device as if they're in the second situation with not a
| care in the world.
|
| Anyone's walled garden experience isn't meaningfully dependent
| on anyone else's sanctioned sideloading or not.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I more or less agree that most people just don't care. It
| surprises me that maybe I don't care anymore either. It has
| been years since I was a FSF member, and even though I have 3
| Linux laptops that I enjoy occasionally, so much of my
| digital life is spent on a very nice iPad Pro, with just a
| few apps, besides Safari, that I use: a Mosh client because I
| always have a few screens open on a powerful remote server
| available with a perfect tmux and Emacs setup, the Chess.com
| app, ProtonMail and Calendar apps, and entertainment: YouTube
| and YouTube Music apps, and the Disney and many other
| streaming apps.
|
| Apple's walled garden is most of my digital life, and at
| least for now, that is good enough. I can imagine switching
| to a Samsung foldable phone with a good docking story, but
| that will probably not happen.
|
| EDIT: another things that keeps me from caring about being in
| a walled garden is that so much of my Intellectual life is
| serviced by the cloud: Colab Pro for most deep learning
| experiments, the web based Leanpub authoring system, etc.
| Choosing devices and operating systems seems less important.
| When I travel, it does not matter much if I grab my smallest
| Linux laptop or my iPad Pro to take on a trip.
| Terretta wrote:
| See deeper comment below, but yes, a corporation should have a
| right to market a curated console experience to mobile device
| consumers who prefer the fully vertically integrated
| experience.
|
| Especially thanks to other options and the small share Apple
| has by volume, it's no more appropriate to crack apart this
| appliance than it is to force PS5 or Xbox Series X to run PC
| games or support Steam.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > it's no more appropriate to crack apart this appliance than
| it is to force PS5 or Xbox Series X to run
|
| Those platforms should also be opened up, yes.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| Well, the Series X already is - it is trivial to enable dev
| mode and it's implemented in a really clever way in which
| no regular user would dare to touch it. Really wish the PS5
| had the same capability.
| tpxl wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned if you 'bought' something, it should be
| yours to do as you please, including reselling and destroying
| it. If you didn't buy something, but rented it - for example a
| game on Steam or Epic Games store - then it should damned say
| so. It's a straight up lie to say you purchased something if
| you didn't.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Haven't you always been able to resell and destroy the Apple
| products that you buy?
| mrighele wrote:
| "If you didn't buy something, but rented it - for example a
| game on Steam or Epic Games store"
|
| I don't know about the other one, but in the Steam store I
| see "Buy" buttons, not "Rent". "Buy <game name>" in the store
| page, then when you go a "Shopping Cart", where you can
| "Purchase" the game.
|
| To me (and to the average people, I guess) it doesn't sound
| as a rental service at all.
|
| I'm sure that their ToS says otherwise, but I wonder how it
| would fare in a court case...
| stavros wrote:
| That's the GP's point, they rent you games but the language
| they use is "buy", and they shouldn't. They should say
| "rent" instead.
| zo1 wrote:
| It won't work because the lawyers will just argue that
| you are "buying" semi perpetual rights to play the game.
|
| You instead need a judge or jury or law that says: "No,
| fuck you, this is confusing and we don't care what's in
| your ToS, you will treat this as a product which has had
| its ownership changed in return for money".
| Closi wrote:
| You are (usually) buying a perpetual licence which is
| revocable, not renting a licence, so the language is
| correct.
|
| Common usage of the word 'buy' also applies here - the
| term 'rent' would be confusing to a customer and would
| usually imply it being time-limited (often days).
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, if I'm buying a revocable license, the language
| should be "renting". It's not the same as having
| ownership over the thing I'm licensing.
| Closi wrote:
| Well if you are buying something, of course the language
| can be "buy".
|
| And you do have ownership of the licence.
| mrighele wrote:
| Buying something and buying a right to use it are two
| different things. If somebody told me that they are
| selling me a house and then I discover that I only got
| the right to live in it, I would be pissed off.
|
| Now, with software this is usually not a big issue
| because the mismatch is not huge. When you buy a retail
| software, you got not the same but at least similar
| rights that you get when you buy a physical book: you can
| use it, you can lend it, you can sell it, you cannot make
| copies. So, when you say "I bought a game", everybody
| understand what it means, even those that disagree with
| the term.
|
| Now in case of something like Steam, not only you get a
| license, but you cannot lend it, you cannot sell it, one
| day you may not be able to use it anymore because the DRM
| servers are taken offline (not Steam's fault this), or
| Steam may decide that you are a "bad guy" and remove
| access to your whole library.
|
| At this point, the difference between "buying something"
| and "buying a license to something" becomes more marked,
| and in my opinion should warrant a different term on the
| store.
| jtbayly wrote:
| No, you don't have ownership of the license. You can't
| sell it, so you don't own it.
| Closi wrote:
| You can absolutely own things without being able to sell
| them.
|
| See pharmaceuticals as an obvious/trivial example - you
| can own prescription drugs without being able to
| sell/dispense them.
| jtbayly wrote:
| If the law forbids something, that's a very different
| situation than a TOS or EULA forbidding something.
| stavros wrote:
| If I'm buying Bastion, the language currently on Steam
| isn't "buy a license to Bastion", it's "buy Bastion".
| That's misleading if what I'm actually buying is the
| license.
| Closi wrote:
| What do you believe 'buy' means if it doesn't mean access
| to download the game and a digital licence to use it?
|
| Also is GameStop allowed to use the term 'buy' in their
| shops? Because they are often selling a licence too, it's
| just in a box.
| stavros wrote:
| I believe "buy" means the same thing as in the sentence
| "I bought a fork". I can use the forks for as long as I
| want, I can sell it, I can give it away, I don't have to
| tell anyone how or when I use it, and if someone doesn't
| want me to use it any more, they can go fork themselves.
| Closi wrote:
| I guess you can believe that, but that's a very narrow
| definition of "buy" and certinaly more narrow than both
| the dictionary definition and common usage.
|
| Under your definition you can't buy a ticket to a
| concert, or buy pharmacuticals if a doctor gives you a
| perscription, but most people would say that you could
| buy those things.
| [deleted]
| aix1 wrote:
| What does it mean for a perpetual licence to be
| revocable?
|
| To my layman's ear the two terms sound almost
| contradictory.
| eddieroger wrote:
| It means it is your forever, unless it is taken back, the
| reasons for which would be described elsewhere in the
| contract. The language may not be lay language, but
| neither was the ream of paper it took to buy my house,
| but people still do that every day.
| aix1 wrote:
| Digging into this a little deeper, even "irrevocable"
| isn't as clear-cut as one might expect.
|
| > An "irrevocable" license, on the other hand, cannot be
| terminated, although there is some divergence in
| authority regarding whether this means that the license
| cannot be terminated for any reason or only that the
| license cannot be terminated for convenience, but still
| may be terminated for breach.
|
| https://casetext.com/analysis/the-terms-revocable-and-
| irrevo...
| flohofwoe wrote:
| It's not quite as simple, the main reason for the 'rent'
| argument is DRM (e.g. most Steam games will stop working
| if the Steam client can't phone home for a while), but
| some games on Steam are actually DRM free - it's a very
| small minority though.
| tommica wrote:
| Gog is a good example of how it should be done - you buy
| the game, and it can be played without needing their
| servers to be accessible
| [deleted]
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I don't think those alternatives are the right ones.
|
| You can sell your iphone without any issue, there are plenty
| of stores around me offering to buy used models to resell.
| I'm actually contemplating buying a used model. Can't do that
| with steam games.
|
| I'm also pretty confident that if apple and their services
| disappeared tomorrow, my iphone would keep on working just
| like it does today. Sure, no more updates, no more new apps,
| it would be frozen in the state it's in.
|
| Therefore, I think the question is whether an iphone is a
| "general computing device", or "an appliance". I can see the
| arguments for both, even though I tend to treat mine as the
| latter.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| I am semi-confident that with how anti-stealing feature
| works in iPhone, if apple servers are permanently down, few
| thousand phone owners a day will lose access to their phone
| forever. Not only to data, that is the part of encryption
| deal. To the device itself.
|
| Otherwise, stealing would be very easy - just connect to
| wifi without access to apple servers and voila: phone is
| yours.
| LMYahooTFY wrote:
| > I'm also pretty confident that if apple and their
| services disappeared tomorrow, my iphone would keep on
| working just like it does today. Sure, no more updates, no
| more new apps, it would be frozen in the state it's in.
|
| You can hardly call that "working like it does today". It
| doesn't. When features on it inevitably cease to work or be
| interoperable, you're screwed. And every day, you're
| probably more vulnerable to crime.
|
| If I buy a house, I can learn to maintain it and keep it
| secured. I can't do that with my iPhone.
| Muromec wrote:
| >If I buy a house, I can learn to maintain it and keep it
| secured. I can't do that with my iPhone.
|
| For the argument's sake, your ability to do things to
| your own house is restricted by zoning, by HOA and god
| forbid you from buying something of historical
| significance in Europe -- then you can't change anything
| inside or outside and you are responsible for it.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I think it's important to make a distinction between the
| restrictions imposed by law and restrictions imposed by
| the seller.
|
| For pretty much every thing there are restrictions on
| what you can do with it - if I buy a phone, I'm
| prohibited from smashing it into my neighbour's face, and
| grinding it up and baking into the cookies I sell would
| be a violation of health&safety rules, but that's still
| full ownership.
|
| Now, if the seller wants to impose _extra_ restrictions
| above and beyond what the general society does, that 's a
| different issue.
| justeleblanc wrote:
| > god forbid you from buying something of historical
| significance in Europe -- then you can't change anything
| inside or outside and you are responsible for it.
|
| What an exaggeration. Do you think such hyperbole
| strengthens your point? At best it makes you sound
| ignorant.
| LMYahooTFY wrote:
| True, and those issues are subjected to the same
| philosophical debates. Historical buildings are often
| categorically different, but HOAs (for a product
| manufactured and sold to you, as well as the land itself)
| are lambasted for the same reasons.
| aeyes wrote:
| If Apple disappears all push notifications will stop
| working, even the ones from apps you already installed.
| This is another restriction of the walled garden.
| codethief wrote:
| > I'm also pretty confident that if apple and their
| services disappeared tomorrow, my iphone would keep on
| working just like it does today. Sure, no more updates, no
| more new apps, it would be frozen in the state it's in.
|
| I think you're underestimating how much of the iPhone's
| functionality depends on Apple's servers being available
| beyond just installing & updating apps: Think push
| notifications, backups, iCloud, iMessage, no more Safari
| updates ( _shiver_ ), ...
| the_common_man wrote:
| How would one install or update an app if apple and
| services disappear?
| stavros wrote:
| Like the sibling comment says, sideloading. Same as how
| you do it on Android, where other stores exist (e.g.
| F-droid). It's not as convenient as the Play Store,
| because Google hasn't made it such, but it's not too
| inconvenient either.
|
| The fact that you can't even imagine how that might work
| points to the real problem.
| sverhagen wrote:
| Ha! Sideloading!
| kuschku wrote:
| I added a wifi relay to my washing machine to add it to
| home assistant.
|
| How do I add my own apps to my iPhone, permanently?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Therefore, I think the question is whether an iphone is
| a "general computing device", or "an appliance"._
|
| This is a red herring. What matters is your freedom to use,
| repair, modify, resell, loan etc the hardware you bought
| and own.
| hooby wrote:
| I agree. Anyone should be allowed to repair, tinker with and
| modify anything they own - at their own risk.
|
| When it comes to software, that's only possible to do with
| open source. With closed source you're only ever buying a
| perpetual usage license. (Unless you are a company buying out
| another company or it's assets, that is).
|
| It's complicated, because software and digital data is
| inherently different from physical goods - and all those
| concepts of "selling" a "copy" are just rather ramshackle
| attempts at making digital goods compatible with laws
| designed for physical goods.
| justeleblanc wrote:
| Do you buy movie tickets, or do you rent them?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Unlike with games, you can resell movie tickets. So you buy
| them.
| justeleblanc wrote:
| https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/19/20874384/french-court-
| stea...
| beebeepka wrote:
| Games on steam are not rented
| PeterisP wrote:
| Can you resell a game you've 'bought' on steam to someone
| else?
| oblak wrote:
| Not yet.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| The very fact that you say so basically proves the parent's
| point: you believe that you bought a game (or a Kindle
| ebook or whatever), whereas in fact you have zero control
| over it and if the vendor decides you can't use it, you
| can't. It's not a theory, it's practical reality, already
| tested by Adobe.
| herbst wrote:
| They pretty much are according to their ToS
| beebeepka wrote:
| Laws trump ToS of any kind. Do you disagree with that? If
| things are different in your jurisdiction, please do
| share how and why
| herbst wrote:
| I agree (hence the whole topic) however in practice steam
| has full control. If steam servers shut down tomorrow and
| the client destroys itself most games will refuse to
| start.
| blendergeek wrote:
| > Laws trump ToS of any kind. Do you disagree with that?
|
| What do you mean by that? The steam ToS (which are
| enforceable by law) make pretty clear that Valve can
| revoke your access to any game at any time. Further, your
| access is dependent on Valve's continued existence. The
| argument that you are "buying a license" is like saying
| you "buy a rental contract" at a car rental place. The
| contract you have with Valve to play the game allows you
| to play the game for an indefinite period of time, but
| crucially only while Valve is still in business and while
| they let you play the game. This is in the ToS and in the
| USA there is no reason (IANAL) that I see to think the
| courts won't enforce this contract.
|
| > If things are different in your jurisdiction, please do
| share how and why
|
| Which law in your jurisdiction makes the Valve ToS feel
| more like a purchase and less like a rental?
| oblak wrote:
| Are you seriously arguing that ToS somehow override laws?
|
| Since you're not a lawyer (your words) and seem to care
| about US laws (I don't), I am not sure what's the point
| of this response to a topic about digital purchases in
| the EU.
| vel0city wrote:
| The big difference with the car rental vs a perpetual
| license is the perpetual aspect of it. Nobody is signing
| a contract with a car rental place to exchange money once
| and then have the car for a long, indeterminate time.
|
| Rental contracts have defined time periods. Perpetual
| licenses don't. That's a massive difference.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| It's mostly semantics for this context. You purchase the
| right to use them for an unspecified time, not the game
| itself. Steam can revoke that access by shutting down your
| account or the service at any time. DRM will make sure that
| not even games you have installed will continue to run.
| oblak wrote:
| They have no right to delete installed games, do they?
| How, exactly, is steam going to prevent you from
| accessing the files on your computer? They are always
| there and ready to be archived by you and even Steam
| itself.
|
| Now, some, or even many, new games may refuse if they are
| somehow extremely dependent on the service. The ones that
| I have tried run fine. Most old stuff, though.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > How, exactly, is steam going to prevent you from
| accessing the files on your computer
|
| The vast supermajority of games on steam require steam
| itself to be operable in order to even run. Valve
| absolutely can break or turn off steam and (legally!)
| revoke access to most games on most steam user PCs that
| way.
| oblak wrote:
| Are you sure they can legally break my games without due
| compensation? For any reason whatsoever? I find that hard
| to believe.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| If we were being very pedantic, what would you say is the
| test of ownership? If you buy an iPhone you can sell it or
| destroy it, so it meets those requirements of ownership. You
| can't destroy something you're renting, so you clearly aren't
| renting an iPhone.
|
| How would I know if I own a device or not?
|
| If you buy an iPhone, but don't think you own it. Why don't
| you think you own it? If your response is "because I can't
| run the software I want to on it," is that a problem with the
| perception of what you bought or is that a violation of the
| idea of ownership? If that's a violation of the idea of
| ownership, why?
| letier wrote:
| If you're required to accept license agreements to be able
| to use the device and those agreements restrict you in how
| you use it, then I see this as a restriction to your
| ownership. Especially if the terms are opaque and not
| clearly communicated before the purchase.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Property law has been deep on all the various aspects of
| ownership for millenia, so there's a big "bundle of rights"
| which any specific type of ownership may or may not have.
|
| One test for "full ownership" is the contractual
| restrictions that come attached; i.e. whether the law is
| the only thing that limits what you can do with the thing,
| or whether there are some extra conditions (which are not
| that rare in e.g. real estate deals for as long as we have
| recorded history); that's generally considered ownership
| but a restricted one. On the other hand, if you aren't
| _prohibited_ to do that thing but simply aren 't capable of
| doing it, that would still be considered unrestricted
| ownership.
|
| But something that is a _key_ part of ownership -
| especially with respect to various "buying" of e.g. games
| - is the ability to transfer it to others. If you can't
| give or sell the thing you've purchased to someone else,
| that clearly indicates that you don't own it.
| tchalla wrote:
| > If we were being very pedantic, what would you say is the
| test of ownership?
|
| Here's the concept of ownership for private property in
| German Law. It's broadly defined as 1) Exclusive Rights, 2)
| Transferability, 3) Protection against Unlawful
| Interference, 4) Compensation for Expropriation and 5)
| Inheritance and Succession.
| [deleted]
| sdeframond wrote:
| I believe lawyerspeak has three separate concepts of
| "ownership":
|
| - _usus_ , the right to enjoy the thing,
|
| - _fructus_ , tge right to reap the fruits from the thing
|
| - and _abusus_ , the right to sell, alter or destroy the thing.
|
| To "own" something generally means all of the above, althought
| it might not always be the case:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct
| seydor wrote:
| > you are just paying some sort of admission fee to a tightly
| controlled service
|
| iphones act as social signaling for alot of people
| fortuna86 wrote:
| I've heard this, I haven't seen this.
|
| Maybe a smart phone was a status symbol 10 years ago, they
| are just commodities today.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It'll probably depend on where you live, what type of
| person you are, and what communities you're a part of;
| teenagers will see them a lot different from tech bros;
| others get really excited when seeing a new model. I mean
| the first people with smartwatches or Google Glasses were
| the center of attention (positive or negative) for a while.
|
| In my own communities (work), I'm one of the few with an
| iphone, most have Android.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I do recognise it; large iPhones and Apple Watches are
| still about twice the price of the competitor. And people
| with Android phones are considered poor here.
| sbuk wrote:
| Where is "here"? Wouldn't you say that any party making
| those sorts of judgements (iPhone users are sheep/Android
| users are poor) aren't worth listening to? Isn't that
| more of a reflection of "here's" culture than the
| individuals choice? Is it not that an individuals choice
| to buy something is more than just a cost decision?
| criddell wrote:
| If you keep your phone 3 years, then that phone costs you
| a dollar or two per day and that's within reach of many
| people. Lots of us keep the phone much longer than that
| and if you do plan on keeping the phone for a long time,
| Apple has a better reputation for supporting 5 year old
| devices than any budget Android maker. Apple's hardware
| also has a pretty strong resale value. Apple phones are
| probably less expensive overall than lots of Android
| phones.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| There's still a massive leap in logic that you aren't
| including in your comment. It sounds like you should
| check your priors.
| pierrebeaucamp wrote:
| I disagree. While this dichotomy might hold true in other
| examples, in the case of iPhones it was always possible to push
| custom software to your own device for development purposes.
| There is a somewhat arbitrary limitation that those apps only
| work for a week until the process needs to be repeated (unless
| you enroll in Apple's Developer Program), but that's a
| different topic.
|
| The main demand in these "sideloading" discussions is therefore
| that Apple ought to make installing unlisted Apps easier.
| Personally, I don't understand why this should be of Apple's
| concern though. They already present a choice to app
| developers: Either go through their walled garden or impose a
| technical process on your (non-technical) end-users.
| Interestingly, there are already projects like AltStore that
| try to make the latter easier, which should be taken as proof
| that the whole "sideloading is impossible" argument is not
| really truthful.
|
| Why this rose up to the highest ranks of the political system
| is beyond me.
|
| PS: The existence of Jailbreaks further undermines the argument
| that you cannot control the software on your device.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>PS: The existence of Jailbreaks further undermines the
| argument that you cannot control the software on your device.
|
| How? It's like saying car manufacturers aren't really locking
| down their cars to hardware that only official dealerships
| own, because after all you can just buy a coding tool from
| some random AliExpress seller so it's fine. What are people
| complaining about.
|
| >> in other examples, in the case of iPhones it was always
| possible to push custom software to your own device for
| development purposes.
|
| Sure, which is still a process 100% controlled by apple and
| which they can pull out at any moment. Also let's not pretend
| it's anywhere near as easy as installing Galaxy Store on
| android and instantly getting out of Google's restrictions on
| the play store. Hopefully we'll get legislation that removes
| that possibility entirely.
|
| >>The main demand in these "sideloading" discussions is
| therefore that Apple ought to make installing unlisted Apps
| easier.
|
| I have no idea where you've seen such demands, because it's
| not true. No one wants apple to host apps which would
| otherwise be unlisted or outright banned. That wouldn't make
| any logical sense and would be an unjust cost on apple. I do
| however want to be able to install an alternative app store
| and install apps from it without apple butting their nose
| into it. Like courts have ruled in the past already - if I
| make some software for iOS and a person wants to buy that
| software, why should apple control whether I can sell them
| that software or worse - get a cut of the sale[0]. Because
| they made the platform? Well, you don't pay anything to
| Mercedes for making mercedes-compatible wipers, and I really
| struggle to see how this is any different.
|
| [0] assuming you don't use the app store of course in which
| case they should absolutely be paid.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Of course you own the hardware; you have the right to do
| whatever you want to it. If you want to use iPhones for target
| practice, have at it. You don't have the right to insist the
| manufacturer make it _easy_ for you: your imagination about the
| uses to which the hardware could be put doesn 't oblige the
| seller.
| Terretta wrote:
| Just like a PS5.
|
| No, the iPhone and iPad are appliances, not general
| computing, forcing division between hardware, firmware, and
| software is a technical design decision that prevents users
| from choosing a fully vertically integrated appliance device.
|
| People who choose consoles over building PCs, and pick
| iPhones over tinkerable Android, have a right to that choice,
| and corporations have a right to market to them.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >You don't have the right to insist the manufacturer make it
| easy for you
|
| I do, and it's easy, look: I believe Apple should let me
| install DOOM on the bootloader and make it easy for me to do
| so. If I had time to waste, I'd send emails every day, go
| protest in front of their HQ until I get what I want.
|
| Apple's allowed to not do anything about it, and I'm allowed
| to lobby my legislators to force Apple to do so. Because
| Apple's wishes are not law, not in any functioning country
| that I know of.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| So what you're saying is you don't have that right at the
| moment, but you feel you could have it if the law changed?
| OK, sure.
| peyton wrote:
| Don't think legislators can force Apple to write software
| for your phone in the US at least. Maybe in places with
| fewer free speech protections.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| No, but they can force Apple to reveal how to write that
| software, as well as provide the existing and necessary
| tools to do so.
|
| In the same way, they cannot force Apple to write me a
| new, alternative app store, but they can force Apple to
| open the existing APIs to others. Also, making you write
| software has absolutely nothing to do with free speech.
| tehlike wrote:
| Open app markets act and American innovation and choice online
| act cannot come soon enough
| culopatin wrote:
| I hope we are able to develop a jvm for Apple so I can run Java
| apps. Probably a great thing for old enterprise apps but also for
| me to use an iPad to tune my ECU. The program runs on anything
| that runs Java but not iOS
| FriedPickles wrote:
| As the developer of a subscription app, if unfettered side-
| loading is allowed I'd be worried about cracked versions of my
| app being distributed.
|
| We've done everything in the client for privacy and reliability,
| but the obvious countermeasure would be to move functionality
| over to a backend. This would be history echoing the transition
| from boxed software to SaaS.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Isn't it a bit like the movies and music? Those who will steal
| will steal and those who will pay will pay anyway.
|
| There are great pirate movie websites where you can watch all
| the movies at about the same user experience or even better but
| Netflix etc are doing just fine.
|
| Piracy isn't what it used to be but I do enjoy these sites.
|
| The real problem is the subscription fatigue and fragmentation.
| I won't subscribe to all the services and Even if I have a
| subscription it's easier for me to find the movies in one
| place.
|
| However apps are different, you are expected to open different
| apps for different things anyway. In apps, the danger could be
| something like ChatGPT becoming the main UI and doing
| everything the user wants from there.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Those who will steal will steal and those who will pay will
| pay anyway.
|
| That's not been my experience. Every time a crack appeared
| for my software sales went down. Every time I strengthened
| the licensing software sales went up. This is for B2B
| software, god knows what it is like if you sell to consumers.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| I lost the access to Rubymine and switched to vs code. If I
| can't have it free, I switch. I won't post for it, it's not
| worth it.
| [deleted]
| mrtksn wrote:
| Could it be the case that B2B software is more susceptible
| to piracy induced revenue loss? I imagine B2B being
| completely utilitarian, thus "free" software would mean
| direct cost cuts.
|
| In B2C, generally, convenience is the king.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Talking to my peers I get the impression it's worse for
| consumer oriented software.
| bluesign wrote:
| It is same if you have big audience, it is very different if
| you are developing for a niche market.
| MikusR wrote:
| Sideloading/piracy is already possible on ios with stuff like
| altstore. It just needs to resign the app every 7 days.
| zamnos wrote:
| Piracy was the funniest part. Originally Apple claimed they
| needed to control the platform and sign binaries to prevent
| piracy. Then, someone realized that if the pirated app didn't
| need to be modified, then the pirates could reuse the
| original signature. There was still the issue of getting the
| ipa onto the device, but that wasn't too hard back in the
| Cydia days.
| brenns10 wrote:
| Except, side-loading has already existed on Android for... a
| long time. I regularly install from F-Droid, and it's totally
| possible to download an .apk from the Internet and install it.
| If your client was getting "cracked" it could already have been
| happening on Android for years (assuming you have an Android
| app). See also: Youtube vanced.
|
| So really what you're saying in this comment is that you've
| written your backend APIs with the assumption that the only
| user is a benevolent app which you wrote. If it's possible for
| somebody to take your app and tweak it to circumvent your
| subscription's restrictions, then what prevents a person from
| hooking up their phone to a development HTTPS proxy,
| intercepting the API requests, and making their own cracked
| client without side-loading at all?
|
| Side-loading is NOT a problem for subscription apps done
| properly, and it's NOT a problem for privacy or security, so
| long as the side-loading implementation is done responsibly.
| FriedPickles wrote:
| > what prevents a person from hooking up their phone to a
| development HTTPS proxy, intercepting the API requests, and
| making their own cracked client without side-loading at all?
|
| SSL pinning, essentially.
|
| Totally true about Android--it's the smaller platform for us,
| but the fact we have not seen piracy there yet gives me hope.
|
| To be clear I am in favor of sideloading, and we would
| benefit from it in several ways.
| realusername wrote:
| No study managed to prove a loss of revenue with piracy, you
| are not going to be the first app in the world to experience
| it.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3577670
| realusername wrote:
| I see nothing in this paper which is proving their claim.
| The worst part is when they talk about the drop of CD sales
| pre-streaming where the legal options to consume music
| online ... just didn't exist at all.
|
| If there's no legal option where your customers can pay
| you, that sure can lead to a revenue drop.
|
| The music industries have been very slow to adapt to the
| internet and it has cost them some revenue, I'll give you
| that but that has nothing to do with piracy.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >If there's no legal option where your customers can pay
| you, that sure can lead to a revenue drop.
|
| But you think that all stopped as soon as there was a
| legal option? Do you really think there are no people out
| there who can afford it but chose to pirate anyway?
|
| I don't know why people find it so hard to believe other
| than they are trying to justify their own activity. Do
| you think the media industry spent all this money on
| anti-piracy activities just for the fun of it?
| realusername wrote:
| > But you think that all stopped as soon as there was a
| legal option? Do you really think there are no people out
| there who can afford it but chose to pirate anyway?
|
| Yes it did https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ ,
| that's exactly what happened.
|
| As soon as they added a way to receive money, customers
| paid, it's visible on the graph.
|
| If customers can't pay you, of course you are going to
| lose money.
|
| > I don't know why people find it so hard to believe
| other than they are trying to justify their own activity.
| Do you think the media industry spent all this money on
| anti-piracy activities just for the fun of it?
|
| It has more to do about content control than money. Guess
| who benefits the most of stricter copyright rules? The
| RIAA, MPAA and similar organisations, it's a conflict of
| interest. Being harsh on piracy is easier to sell than
| just "give us more power because we deserve it"
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >As soon as they added a way to receive money, customers
| paid, it's visible on the graph.
|
| Some customers paid. What I'm saying is there are a
| significant number who could pay but won't and the harder
| you make the piracy the smaller that number will be.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| That's a paid study, it's worthless. You are very
| disingenuous by providing it.
|
| > It has to be noted that the research was carried out as
| part of Carnegie Mellon University's Initiative for Digital
| Entertainment Analytics (IDEA), which received a generous
| donation from the MPAA.
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-block-doesnt-boost-
| sales...
| seydor wrote:
| App tourism when
| sdze wrote:
| [dead]
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Sons of beaches! I'm moving to Europe across the pond. _Swims
| faster_
|
| I would expect it to be piloted in one region first and then
| phase across regions. It's not exactly something you want to YOLO
| and deploy to the entire world fleet all at once with customer
| devices and server infrastructure.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I am wondering if I could take a trip to Europe, side-load an
| app, and return to the states. Would Apple suddenly geo-block
| my already installed application?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Since this is an example of increasing individual freedom at the
| cost of corporate freedom, I wonder about the silence of US
| citizens about the whole topic. I always thought the 'land of the
| free' slogan is about individuals, not companies ;)
| solarkraft wrote:
| (american voice)
|
| You're free to buy another product!
| pongo1231 wrote:
| So I have a choice between a walled garden (for my best
| interests of course) and straight up spyware - unless of
| course I'm willing to play a game of "where's waldo" where I
| find the perfect combination of android phone with a model
| number which does not have a locked bootloader, good
| prolonged community support, custom ROMs with a good
| reputation and not just a bunch of modifications thrown
| together by some random XDA user, no weird hardware
| attestation shenanigans and then participating in the eternal
| cat and mouse game of SafetyNet breaking my apps because I am
| not running on a supported configuration (again for my best
| interests). How flattering.
|
| I know your reply was meant to be satire but I've heard that
| argument used legit for this case many times. I just don't
| know how it can be taken seriously in a duopoly like this -
| unless they are seriously considering GNU/Linux phones to be
| ready as a primary daily driver or want me to carry around a
| dumb phone instead?
| solarkraft wrote:
| (still american voice)
|
| You're free to make your own phone company! Just break the
| duopoly and get rich!
|
| (american voice off)
|
| I'm still on the lookout for an equivalent example of
| consumer friendly regulation that (even) americans are
| typically behind or at least indifferent towards.
| standing_user wrote:
| It's the land of the free until you touch the turf of some
| lobby or the interests of a big company then you can see the
| average Joe on social media, maybe not on HN, that would fight
| on the internet ring defending the same companies that are
| triyng to screw him over It's amusing to watch
| solarkraft wrote:
| > In addition, developers may have to pay extra if they want
| their apps to be available outside of the iOS App Store
|
| If Apple gets a say in what I "sideload" (it's called
| installing), that's against the spirit of the law. Hopefully the
| EU lawmakers were competent enough to also make it against the
| text of the law. It would be outrageous.
| superkuh wrote:
| Even if this is small progress the headlines and framing of the
| story are still doublespeak. Installing applications on your
| computer is the normal state of things. Walled gardens and not
| having control of your computer is the new weird thing. The word
| "sideloading" is a feudal concept and it's unquestioned use is
| dangerous for society.
|
| Properly stated this story title is, "Installing applications on
| iOS 17 might be allowed Europe" which highlights the absurdity
| intrinsic in the practice of users not being able to install
| applications on their own computers as a default.
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| aikinai wrote:
| Installing whatever you want on your computer is not
| necessarily the natural state; it's not even how the industry
| started and it's not how any other industry or devices work.
|
| I also prefer to be able to do whatever I want with my own
| devices, but pretending like it's an inalienable right, or a
| natural state, or has no disadvantages is disingenuous and not
| helpful to the debate.
| andai wrote:
| Are they real downsides or just excuses cooked up by Apple to
| increase profits, and accepted by apple users to minimize
| cognitive dissonance?
| aikinai wrote:
| The downsides are the obvious; security and privacy are
| better protected, malware is much harder to distribute and
| easier to shut down, fraud is more difficult.
|
| You can absolutely disagree with the trade off, but
| pretending like it's purely greed is obviously
| disingenuous.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > The downsides are the obvious; security and privacy are
| better protected, malware is much harder to distribute
| and easier to shut down, fraud is more difficult.
|
| Is that so? https://lifehacker.com/great-now-the-apple-
| app-store-has-mal...
| aikinai wrote:
| If the App Store had zero impact on the proliferation of
| malware, finding malware in the App Store wouldn't be a
| news story in 2022. It would be well-known and expected
| to be teeming with just as much malware as the open
| Internet for the past fifteen years.
| onlypositive wrote:
| Of course it's the natural state and an inalienable right to
| modify or do with the things you own in the way you see fit.
|
| When was the last time you asked the builders association if
| you could remodel your kitchen?
|
| When was the last time you asked Honda if you could put new
| mags on your car?
|
| This whole idea that devices aren't owned when you purchase
| them is asinine and and insult to humanity.
|
| Your counter arguments that it's new in the industry is
| simply due to the fact they thought they could get away with
| it. Not because they thought it was their right.
|
| You don't see Klein putting limits on what nails you can use
| with a hammer but you can bet your ass they would if they
| could.
| aikinai wrote:
| > Of course it's the natural state and an inalienable right
| to modify or do with the things you own in the way you see
| fit.
|
| I agree. But that's not the same as the right to install
| whatever you want. It's not illegal to jailbreak a phone if
| you can and want to, but it's also not illegal for Apple to
| lock it down if they can and want to. That is and should be
| the default state. And it's the same for everything else,
| your car, washing machine, game console, etc. If you want
| general computers to be explicitly defined to include
| smartphones and uniquely regulated to force more
| requirements on manufacturers and more rights to users,
| then that's great--I agree with that--but at least admit
| it's a new and unique regulation and not the default state.
|
| It's weird you chose houses and cars as your examples since
| they're both highly regulated in the opposite direction
| you're asking for computers. You're heavily restricted to
| what you can modify in either of those and, as far as I
| know, there are no regulations that specifically require
| manufactures to allow users to modify anything. You can
| swap out parts on your car if it complies with regulations,
| but there's no law that you have to be able to install
| software; it's locked down harder than smartphones. And
| just like smartphones today, you do own it and can do what
| you want (excluding other regulations), but there's no
| right to installation; it's just a lockdown/jailbreak
| competition between you and the manufacturer.
|
| I've jailbroken my phones for years and love to do all
| sorts of personal modifications to my computers and other
| devices. I think regulations to protect device freedom are
| a great idea; I just want people to be intellectually
| honest about the debate.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > but it's also not illegal for Apple to lock it down if
| they can and want to.
|
| That's the problem, it should be.
|
| > It's weird you chose houses and cars as your examples
| since they're both highly regulated in the opposite
| direction you're asking for computers. You're heavily
| restricted to what you can modify in either of those and,
| as far as I know, there are no regulations that
| specifically require manufactures to allow users to
| modify anything. You can swap out parts on your car if it
| complies with regulations, but there's no law that you
| have to be able to install software; it's locked down
| harder than smartphones. And just like smartphones today,
| you do own it and can do what you want (excluding other
| regulations), but there's no right to installation; it's
| just a lockdown/jailbreak competition between you and the
| manufacturer.
|
| That's what OS is for, it prohibits your from installing
| bomb instead of kitchen appliance. Repeat after me:
| Store. Does. Not. Dictate. Your. Usage. Of. Device.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| the o. s. isn't a hammer. it's a service
|
| i'm sure you can find an o. s. that lets you do whatever
| you want. but will it be updated regularly with security
| fixes? will it support the latest connectivity technology
| like 5g? will it have built in support for the latest
| compression formats to take high res pics and videos? will
| it work anywhere in the world?
|
| if it does sure. go use it. i don't think this exists and
| i'm happy to pay apple for a new phone that does this and
| upgrade every 5 years
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > but will it be updated regularly with security fixes?
| will it support the latest connectivity technology like
| 5g? will it have built in support for the latest
| compression formats to take high res pics and videos?
| will it work anywhere in the world?
|
| Er. Yes? To all of those? Trivially? Heck, _Android_ does
| those, with the FOSS ROMs typically doing better than the
| closed vendor solutions.
| conjuredbytes wrote:
| Linux: am I a joke to you?
| politician wrote:
| > it's not even how the industry started
|
| Which industry? The very earliest computers ran software
| written by end-users.
| aikinai wrote:
| The computer industry. Computers were devices that came
| with predetermined hardware and software for a long time
| until unbundling took over and became the de facto
| standard.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| for a long time meaning until they were not _personal_
| computers?
|
| of course I can't install any other software on a CAT
| scanner, that's the equivalent of what computers were at
| the beginning, they were single purpose machines, but
| they could be _programmed_ by the owners almost
| immediately after being invented.
|
| The computer industry started with microcomputers in the
| 70s, by the mid of the decade they were cheap enough that
| individuals could own them and write software for them.
|
| But starting from the 60s students had the chance of
| sitting at a computer station and programming them to do
| whatever they wanted them to do, according to their at
| the time limited possibilities.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > I also prefer to be able to do whatever I want with my own
| devices, but pretending like it's an inalienable right, or a
| natural state, or has no disadvantages is disingenuous and
| not helpful to the debate.
|
| I own the freaking thing.
| aikinai wrote:
| Sorry, I phrased that poorly. Actually you already can do
| whatever you want with it. As long as you're not breaking
| other laws, you can do anything you want with your iPhone,
| including jailbreak it and install your own software.
|
| What people are asking for isn't the right to do whatever
| they want with their device--they already have that--
| they're asking for the law to force Apple to design their
| OS in a certain way.
|
| And again, maybe that law is the best idea and should be
| passed--there are certainly a lot of apparent advantages.
| But I'd ask people to be honest about what they're asking
| for. It's not granting the user any new freedoms; it's
| taking away freedom from manufacturers.
|
| It's like copyright; most people (or at least a lot of
| people) consider it a good law that encourages more
| creative work and supports a healthy industry, but it too
| is a law that removes freedom rather than grants it.
| ksec wrote:
| That is assuming Smartphone is a computer. Not agreeing or
| disagreeing, but the point is people have different
| interpretation. Some think it is an Appliance.
|
| Sad that it has to come to this messy stage where the law has
| to be enforced. But then Apple isn't the same Steve Jobs Apple.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Installing applications on your computer is the normal state
| of things.
|
| It really wasn't. It wasn't normal to install arbitrary
| applications on the computers in your fridge, dishwasher, game
| consoles, flip phones, washing machines, etc. Platforms have
| varied over time in how open they are to having other people
| developing for them. iOS is an example of a more closed
| platform and has shown that closed platforms can be successful.
| You can see Windows as a more open platform in comparison which
| was also successful. How open a platform is comes with
| different trade offs.
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| The question is which of these is a general purpose computer
| and which isn't. IMHO if what people tend to do on a platform
| is the same as what they do on a PC then that platform should
| also be forced to be a general-purposed computer and allow
| (in some roundabout way) arbitrary application installation.
|
| For example, a smartphone replaces a PC for a lot of people.
| I even know some people in their 20s that don't own a
| "normal" laptop/desktop and they do most of their general
| purpose computing on their phones. In the meantime, nobody
| uses a Nintendo Switch or their dishwasher to do a quick edit
| of an excel sheet or access their bank account even if they
| are technically capable of doing so.
| charcircuit wrote:
| What is your definition of "general purpose computer." I
| would disagree that PCs should allow for arbitrary
| application installs. Take for example chromebooks. They
| are one of the most secure PCs out there partly due to not
| allowing arbitrary apps to be installed.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > iOS is an example of a more closed platform and has shown
| that closed platforms can be successful.
|
| It is successful despite being closed, not because of it.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Do you have any evidence backing this idea? It is
| reasonable to believe that the closed platform allowed for
| the platform to be more trust worthy making it grow faster
| due to more people seeing it as a platform they can trust.
| Or maybe an open platform would have led to mass piracy of
| apps meaning there is less motivation for developers to
| make apps.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Do you have any evidence backing this idea?
|
| First search in Google.
|
| https://source.sheridancollege.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art
| icl...
|
| Also, from my own discussion over the years with
| different people, security topic popped up only when iOS
| fans tried to diss Android users.
| charcircuit wrote:
| This paper does not show that being closed was negative
| to the success of the iphone.
|
| It does mention that "perceived security" was a factor.
| eimrine wrote:
| [flagged]
| icehawk wrote:
| Which ARM computers where you installing arbitrary
| applications on?
|
| What flip phones? They were all locked down on the carrier
| side.
|
| You're still not installing arbitrary applications on game
| consoles even now that they're running x86.
|
| Stop speaking like that please.
| userbinator wrote:
| _What flip phones? They were all locked down on the
| carrier side._
|
| You seem to have missed the, admittedly brief, period
| where Java games on phones were extremely commonplace.
| simondotau wrote:
| If you think they were "extremely commonplace", you were
| living in a mid-2000s tech bubble. At best they were
| kinda commonplace among a narrow set of people who gave a
| shit, knew it was possible, happened to have devices
| which supported these games, happened to have a revision
| of the device which wasn't locked down by the carrier,
| and who had the time and patience to tinker with such
| unusable junk.
|
| If more than 1 percent of Java-capable handsets ever had
| third party software downloaded onto them post-purchase,
| I'd eat my hat.
|
| I wonder if even 1 percent of iPhones manage to get used
| without ever having at least one app installed from the
| App Store.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > What flip phones? They were all locked down on the
| carrier side.
|
| You know, like things that were before iPhone and
| Android? That were running J2ME? Jar files?
| simondotau wrote:
| You can't (officially) install arbitrary software on a
| PlayStation. Explain how describing a PlayStation as "x86"
| is in any way relevant to anything anyone was talking
| about.
|
| Your response sounds like a bullshit which, in my opinion,
| it is. Stop speaking like that please.
| wilg wrote:
| We focus too much on criticizing language instead of ideas.
| IMHO, this just leads to tiresome and hollow debates. So, I'll
| call that out here.
|
| Also, your proposed rewording isn't correct either because
| installing applications is already allowed. You can debate the
| App Store all you want, but it definitely does let you install
| apps.
|
| On topic: This is silly and Apple should allow sideloading. I
| don't buy the security argument because the security comes from
| the sandbox, not Apple's poorly-run approval process.
| superkuh wrote:
| >criticizing language instead of ideas.
|
| I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. It's obvious
| that I'm criticising the idea of "sideloading" not the word.
| You can call it some other arrangement of letters and the
| concept is still very dangerous.
|
| And in this case it is also definitely true that apple does
| not let you install applications without someone paying them
| $100+ and their continued approval. The "let" is the key
| here.
| wilg wrote:
| Responding even though I know it's not going to be
| fruitful.
|
| The way I came to that conclusion is I read what you wrote,
| which primarily discusses the language, not the idea. See
| your references to "doublespeak", "framing", "headlines",
| and "the word sideloading".
|
| You claimed "Installing applications on iOS 17 might be
| allowed in Europe" would be a more accurate headline. It
| wouldn't be, because you can install applications via the
| App Store. If you wanted your headline to be both accurate
| and to discuss the approval process and fee, you would need
| to include that, as the original headline does by
| mentioning "sideloading", the word that you take issue with
| but does at least actually raise the issue you're concerned
| with.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Don't be mistaken: if you control the language, you've set
| the tone.
| wilg wrote:
| Yeah, sure. I get it. But I see a lot of people wasting a
| lot of time arguing about the definitions of words and how
| to spin them to try to gain the upper hand in The
| Discourse. I'm not sure it's worth it. 1984 may not be a
| good guide anymore.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Even on Windows if I send an EXE or MSI of my software to
| someone they get a scary security warning that prevents them
| from running it. The only guaranteed way around that is to be a
| big company (or a big open-source project).
|
| If security really mattered, every OS would run applications in
| a proper sandbox, but why bother with that when you can just
| point your Web browser at a program running on someone else's
| server? Oh, but consent to these tracking cookies first.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Code signing and associated warnings are significantly
| different from fully prohibiting the execution of unapproved
| code, I'm not sure why people struggle with the distinction.
| Windows has been doing this mostly the same way for literal
| decades.
|
| iOS has a full sandbox which would apply even to "side
| loaded" applications, which makes the arbitrary constraint
| even more ridiculous as a "for your own good" measure.
| mhoad wrote:
| If you hate cookies you're going to be posted when you find
| out what's happening in native apps. It's an order of
| magnitude worse they just don't have to ask or inform you
| first
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Fun fact: This is the reason google pivoted to the web, after
| being blocked as an alternative office suite on Windows.
|
| They realized that they need to change the platform for
| distribution, and hence this is why the web (post-chromium)
| is now what it is...with all its absurd redundancies of APIs
| and bloat.
|
| Only because Microsoft can't keep their shit together.
|
| Apple is more complicated, because despite the absolute
| control they've established (no other browser engine / JIT
| compiler process allowed for whatever made up reasons) they
| did not face the European courts that forced Microsoft for
| the exact same thing to allow to install other Browsers.
|
| And now we are stuck with Safari, repeating the loop, because
| Apple can't keep their shit together.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| >If security really mattered, every OS would run applications
| in a proper sandbox,
|
| these OSes were designed decades ago, before we really had a
| good grasp on security. there were other significant concerns
| as well, such as performance
|
| also, modern OS toolkits, such as on macos and windows 11,
| are moving towards a permission and API model that will allow
| sandboxing. In fact, macos is moving quite quickly towards
| this.
|
| And lastly, there is a widely deployed OS that runs all
| applications in a proper sandbox: chromeos
|
| I think it's understood at this point by everyone in the
| industry that sandboxing is the future, but it's taking a
| while to get there.
| Nursie wrote:
| > before we really had a good grasp on security
|
| Not just that, but before we realised just how many people
| there would be trying to claw their way into any gap for
| all manner of dark purposes.
|
| Early networked OS and protocol designers thought that
| people would, largely, cooperate with each other and share
| resources for the greater good.
|
| I wish to live in their naively optimistic future, instead
| of the one with real humans :/
| userbinator wrote:
| _they get a scary security warning that prevents them from
| running it._
|
| The huge difference is that's only a warning, and not a
| cryptographically locked-down system unlike Apple's.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Call me paranoid, but I see it as a slippery slope. And for
| most users that security warning is as good as a
| cryptographic lockdown anyways.
| userbinator wrote:
| They are certainly boiling the frog slowly.
|
| _And for most users that security warning is as good as
| a cryptographic lockdown anyways._
|
| On the other hand, I find it ironic how a lot of
| "security professionals" will complain constantly about
| users accepting security warnings with no thought anyway
| (and they usually use this argument to justify their
| increasingly authoritarian measures of controlling them.)
| charleslmunger wrote:
| It can be simultaneously true that a warning can be a
| barrier to adoption of your software product versus a
| competitor, and that a warning is not an effective
| barrier for a user who thinks they're installing an
| unreleased video game or going to receive millions of
| dollars of crypto from foreign royalty.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Actually, in a way, it is. All Microsoft has to do is
| revoke your application's signing certificate and Windows
| Defender will prevent it from running on Windows computers.
|
| Apple does the same thing with Notarization and Gatekeeper
| on macOS. If they choose to revoke your signing
| certificate, Gatekeeper will prevent your software from
| running on macOS.
|
| That means if you do, say or compete with something that
| Microsoft or Apple doesn't like, they can prevent your apps
| from running on their platforms.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| How come I can run so much software compiled from source
| then?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I don't know what platform you're using, what app
| distribution method you used, where the code was
| compiled, if the code was signed, where it was signed and
| by who, etc.
|
| A generic answer to your question is that the software
| was signed by whoever compiled or distributed the
| software, which can include your own machine. Your own
| key might be in your trust store or your app distribution
| method might put their key in your trust store. Both
| macOS and Windows will treat software compiled on the
| same system it is run on as blessed to run without strict
| signing checks.
|
| On macOS, ad-hoc certificates can be used, but the OS
| will treat those binaries as if they're radioactive. If
| you compiled code on macOS, the system will treat that
| software specially on that specific system and allow you
| to run it[1]. On Windows, certificates can be added to
| trust stores. Chocolatey, for example, has their own
| signing certificate for all of the compiled open source
| software they have in their repositories, so Windows
| allows their software to run.
|
| The biggest issue is what comes with software
| distribution itself, where your code isn't blessed by
| default by the system it was compiled on, or doesn't have
| signing certificates in the users' trust stores, and
| Gatekeeper and Windows Defender go out of their way to
| stop your users from running software with signing
| certificates they don't like.
|
| [1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/426854
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I compiled it myself. It's not signed as far as I know. I
| didn't disable anything...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Likely because you've either disabled some of the
| overbearing security mechanisms at some point
| (smartscreen is a toggle and it's really frustrating if
| you're setting up a compiler toolchain) or you're running
| files that were produced on the local computer. If you
| disable all the privacy invading checkboxes during
| Windows setup (most don't), you partially neuter
| smartscreen as well.
|
| Every browser I know uses the Mark of the Web to tell
| Windows that a file came from the internet. You'll have
| to store the file on a FAT32/exFAT drive to get rid of
| it. If a file comes from the internet, smart screen kicks
| in.
|
| When a file is unsigned, smartscreen essentially prevents
| you from running the file. You can work around it, but I
| had to look up a tutorial myself.
|
| If the file is signed, metadata will be extracted and
| submitted to Microsoft. If that fails or the exact binary
| hasn't been run on a certain amount of computers, smart
| screen will show a big scary warning despite your $500 a
| year digital signing certificate. This is something
| developers just have to deal with every time they update
| their applications, but most people won't be the first x
| to download the executable and applications using auto
| updaters download updated in the background can the
| necessary flags to work around smartscreen.
|
| The restrictions are there, but they're not there for
| (most) development environments and for most users of
| popular software.
| Strom wrote:
| > _If the file is signed, metadata will be extracted and
| submitted to Microsoft. If that fails or the exact binary
| hasn 't been run on a certain amount of computers, smart
| screen will show a big scary warning despite your $500 a
| year digital signing certificate._
|
| This is true and annoying, but only with regular
| certificates. The more expensive EV certificates bypass
| this "well known" check.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You can just turn off defender. And being specifically
| put in the malware list isn't the same and if clearly
| false could be used in court.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The real issue is with software distribution.
|
| You, personally, can turn off Windows Defender, but your
| users probably have no idea why the app they're trying to
| run doesn't work when they double click it. They're also
| probably shown multiple scary warnings that discourage
| them from using the app and trick them into thinking it's
| broken or malicious.
|
| It's a hurdle just to convince users such an app isn't
| malware, and then it's an entirely other hurdle to help
| them actually run the software by bypassing Defender.
| userbinator wrote:
| Stuff like this happens, and it tends to not get legal
| attention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27914752
|
| I learned long ago, and keep it clearly in my mind, that
| what AV considers "malware" and what the user considers
| malware are not entirely the same.
|
| _and if clearly false could be used in court._
|
| I do wonder if Windows becoming adware, but then the
| built-in antimalware detecting possible "competitors'"
| adware and removing it, could be challenged in court as
| anticompetitive behaviour.
| _flux wrote:
| > That means if you do, say or compete with something
| that Microsoft or Apple doesn't like, they can prevent
| your apps from running on their platforms.
|
| Are there examples of Microsoft actually doing that?
|
| Ability to prevent known malware from being run in the
| majority of PCs after detection seems like a useful
| feature from the Internet health point of view.
| daevout wrote:
| That is a good way of looking at it. What's missing is a catchy
| name to debase store-based installation similar to what was
| done through "sideloading". Perhaps "lord-loading",
| "begstalling", "babybiting", etc.
| zamnos wrote:
| Apple-blessed install
| miramba wrote:
| I used to think the same way, but not anymore. The amount and
| variety of attacks on the devices have increased too much in
| the last years. The device could be encrypted, money could be
| stolen, some malware could sit silently and do surveillance for
| who knows. I always wanted to install software on my iPhone
| without the manufacturing company deciding what I can and can
| not have (according to californian standards!), but would I let
| my kids do that nowadays? No way! Stay on the app stores, also
| on Windows and MacOS is the first line of defense. It's sad but
| the safest approach. Regular users don't need to install
| software on their own anymore, the same as they don't need to
| put processors, storage and Monitors together or install a
| sound card.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| The security on the iPhone is from the app sandbox, not from
| app review.
|
| It's trivial to get something past app review (eg. look at
| casino apps that were disguised as games)
|
| On the Mac, staying on the Mac App Store makes sense because
| it is the easiest way to enforce you only install sandboxed
| apps.
|
| On iOS, that's not going to be necessary, because every app
| on iOS is sandboxed.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _On the Mac, staying on the Mac App Store makes sense
| because it is the easiest way to enforce you only install
| sandboxed apps._
|
| As an aside, I do believe you can use sandboxd with apps
| outside of the App Store, someone just has to write
| security policies for them.
|
| This page suggests that Apple might want to deprecate use
| of sandboxd in favor of just the App Store[1], though.
|
| [1] https://codeberg.org/valpackett/rusty-sandbox
| newaccount74 wrote:
| > I do believe you can use sandboxd with apps outside of
| the App Store
|
| Yes, you can, it's trivial to do so. However, Apple does
| not make it easy to find out if an app is sandboxed or
| not, or what permissions it has.
|
| The warning that macOS shows when opening an app not from
| the Mac App Store does not differentiate between
| sandboxed and non-sandboxed apps.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Regular users don't need to install software on their own
| anymore, the same as they don't need to put processors,
| storage and Monitors together or install a sound card.
|
| Uhuh, sure.
|
| "Shut your mouth, pay and be happy"
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The App Store is a poor line of defense, because it isn't
| about user security, it's about securing Apple's billion
| dollar app distribution monopoly moneyhose. User security is
| just a rhetorical afterthought.
|
| When we forgo real system safety in favor of gatekeeping
| corporate revenue, that isn't security. In fact, such a
| scheme is responsible for mass distribution of malware.
| Apple's App Store is responsible for distributing over half a
| billion copies of Xcodeghost to iPhone and iPad users[1], and
| that's just one piece of malware.
|
| [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-
| trial-is...
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I think you need to look at the system of incentives and
| alignment
|
| If apple's billion dollar app distribution monopoly money
| hose results in security problems for people, then their
| billion dollar app distribution monopoly money hose will be
| in jeopardy since it's justification comes into question.
|
| So what you see as a problem is what makes me feel the best
| about it. Apple is aligned with only secure apps on their
| store and apple is very unaligned with insecure apps.
|
| To apple security is not just a cost center, but a pillar
| of the justification for their monopoly position.
| vhanda wrote:
| > then their billion dollar app distribution monopoly
| money hose will be in jeopardy
|
| It only comes under jeopardy, if there are reasonable
| alternatives the Apple app store (not move to Android).
|
| Otherwise, it's easy for Apple to say - we are now taking
| step x, y and z, and "trust us".
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's a poor justification. You can cleanly implement a
| signing system for trusted developers (they've done it
| before), and it's obviously possible to distribute iPhone
| package files. All the pieces are in place, if it weren't
| for their $80 billion annual hayday then they wouldn't be
| dying on this hill in particular.
|
| Maybe part of it is this security alignment issue, but
| upon scrutiny it's clearly a small and solvable piece of
| the puzzle. Imagine if Keurig tried using user safety to
| justify a 30% cut off every K-cup sold. Such an ecosystem
| is doomed to fail, especially at-scale and with
| completely arbitrary enforcement.
| geocar wrote:
| It sounds more like you're upset about apples revshare
| model on their channel; Why do you care if all your
| competitors also have to pay it?
|
| I don't think the world got better because we got more
| channels on Tv, and I even think some of them might be
| dangerous and harmful to life...
| wiseowise wrote:
| > It sounds more like you're upset about apples revshare
| model on their channel; Why do you care if all your
| competitors also have to pay it?
|
| There's a Ukrainian saying
|
| > Khrin z nim, shcho svoia khata zgorila, golovne u
| susida korova zdokhla
|
| Which literally translates to "Who cares if house is
| burnt down, the most important is that neighbors' cow is
| dead" - that's you. Ever thought that maybe you and/or
| your comptetitor shouldn't have to pay in the first place
| or that shares are unfair?
| geocar wrote:
| > Ever thought that maybe ... shares are unfair?
|
| No actually. I won't ever enter any other kind of
| business-relationship with a larger company unless they
| have real competition that affects price because my
| experience is that larger company will try to mess you up
| if there's _any_ chance at short-term gain. A joint-
| venture is ideal protection, but with Apple my size makes
| that unlikely. Revenue-sharing is a fine alternative to
| me, and if my product becomes worth more than my share I
| can _always_ renegotiate, even with a big company like
| Apple, because we _both_ want the revenue to continue.
| That 's the point.
|
| The pure-play alternative is much harder for small
| companies and individuals because they need cash up-front
| to get into the market, but I do understand the
| advantages for big pockets who don't create value though
| -- I just don't have any intention of being a company so
| big that my only purpose in life is to group-together
| smaller companies that aren't good enough to survive on
| their own.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's fine. I'm not arguing for more channels, I just
| want them to let me use it for things other than the pre-
| approved and Apple-sponsored channels. This is akin to
| your TV manufacturer removing your HDMI input to force
| you to pay for cable.
| [deleted]
| geocar wrote:
| Erm, Apple _shares_ the cable subscription revenue with
| the people who make the content.
|
| People like me.
|
| You are literally talking about stealing my money. To me.
|
| And this doesn't seem strange to you?
| moonchrome wrote:
| > Why do you care if all your competitors also have to
| pay it?
|
| Did you ever publish to appstore ? The amount of bullshit
| you have to go through so that an alternative payment
| method isn't reachable from mobile is insane, and they
| want % of a lot of things, not just sales/subscription -
| a lot of business ideas are unviable because of the
| policy.
|
| Not to mention that your competitors don't have to pay
| the same, big players get special deals and exemptions,
| and Apple has first party advantage on the platform.
| illiarian wrote:
| You've described literally every platform _and_ physical
| store under the sun except desktop OSes.
| geocar wrote:
| > Did you ever publish to appstore ?
|
| Yes.
|
| > The amount of bullshit you have to go through so that
| an alternative payment method isn't reachable from mobile
| is insane, and they want % of a lot of things
|
| You say insane, but you don't say why. Revenue-sharing is
| the best for content producers; I would definitely not
| want to go back to the retail model. What exactly are you
| trying to do?
|
| > a lot of business ideas are unviable because of the
| policy.
|
| A lot of business ideas are unviable without slavery! So
| what? I don't want that, and I hope you don't either! So
| what is it you actually want?
|
| > Not to mention that your competitors don't have to pay
| the same, big players get special deals and exemptions,
|
| _I_ don 't compete with "big players". If Apple didn't
| make an iPhone and I didn't make an app to put on it, I
| wouldn't get that money, and pretending otherwise won't
| make it so. The people I am competing with are in the
| same situation I'm in, and if they're getting success and
| I'm not, I think I should worry about what I can do.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > A lot of business ideas are unviable without slavery!
| So what? I don't want that, and I hope you don't either!
| So what is it you actually want?
|
| Did you just compare freedom to choose alternative
| payment method to slavery? What a bizarre world, I don't
| know why I've even bothered to reply to your comments,
| lol.
|
| > I don't compete with "big players". If Apple didn't
| make an iPhone and I didn't make an app to put on it, I
| wouldn't get that money, and pretending otherwise won't
| make it so. The people I am competing with are in the
| same situation I'm in, and if they're getting success and
| I'm not, I think I should worry about what I can do.
|
| You're dictators wet dream.
|
| "Don't care about unfair system, dig within yourself! If
| competitor is doing good under dictatorship it means the
| problem is within you!"
| geocar wrote:
| > Did you just compare freedom to choose alternative
| payment method to slavery?
|
| Not at all. I said some businesses should not be viable
| and gave the simplest possible example I could think of.
|
| And you did not agree.
|
| Shame on you.
|
| > You're dictators wet dream. "Don't care about unfair
| system, dig within yourself! If competitor is doing good
| under dictatorship it means the problem is within you!"
|
| You're still not saying what you want to do and why it is
| good for society, just that the "dictator" is stopping
| you from doing it. "Alternative payments" can mean all
| sorts of things from money laundering to easier-to-steal,
| and I can't support those things.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| As a further separate but distinct response:
|
| You are justifying why a monopoly app store is bad by
| showing a hack that resulted from downloading an app
| (xcode) from a source other than the app store.
| Security firm Palo Alto Networks surmised that because
| network speeds were slower in China, developers in
| the country looked for local copies of the Apple
| Xcode development environment, and encountered
| altered versions that had been posted on domestic web
| sites. This opened the door for the malware to be
| inserted into high profile apps used on iOS devices.
|
| I think you are also ignoring that apples app store
| position made it possible to authoritatively reach out to
| all who were effected as well as enact other remediation
| efforts.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This just shows that the App Store model is insufficient
| for user security, as the the security model was supposed
| to prevent malware from being distributed to users in the
| first place, no matter what malicious developers upload
| to the App Store. If Apple treats Xcode as App Store
| blessed because it believes it came from blessed sources
| like the App Store, instead of using real security
| measures, exploits will continue to be shipped to users.
| Similarly, if OSes don't implement real security that's
| independent of the App Store model, users will continue
| to be exploited in this way.
|
| > _I think you are also ignoring that apples app store
| position made it possible to authoritatively reach out to
| all who were effected as well as enact other remediation
| efforts._
|
| Microsoft is able to do the same thing with Windows
| Defender without using the App Store model at all.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Microsoft is able to do the same thing with Windows
| Defender without using the App Store model at all.
|
| But not for a lack of trying. Windows has tried to
| retrofit their App Store, just less successfully. One
| good example is the code signing racket, where it's pay
| to play to avoid useless warnings that scare off people
| who don't know better.
|
| Look, you can somewhat reasonably prove the origin of a
| piece of software, but a domain name x509 cert would be
| better (only difference is validity needs to handle
| longer time ranges). The issue is all the "trusted" yadda
| yadda. Doesn't matter if it's an App Store, a holy
| enterprise certificate trafficker or the pope himself
| doing the blessing, it just doesn't hold up. Maybe they
| could have a herd-protection like VSCode extensions:
| "50M+ users" so when I see an executable called
| "Facebook" with "35 users" I can stop and make my own
| judgment that it looks fishy. But that's about UX for
| _checking_ the vendor matches who you think it is, not
| _blessing_ it.
|
| > Similarly, if OSes don't implement real security that's
| independent of the App Store model, users will continue
| to be exploited in this way.
|
| Spot on! Here's the thing: sandboxing software on any of
| the big operating systems wasn't there from the
| beginning, and that's the billion dollar mistake.
| Sandboxing is the only real game changer in end-user
| security with iPhone/android over desktop, not the
| monopolistic app stores. Tbf, Apple at least has tried
| really hard to bring sandboxing to desktop but even they
| are not there yet. These mega corps _should_ imo have
| seen it coming a decade earlier, when the web became
| vastly popular platform, much thanks to sandboxing.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I can't give you a black and white response because I
| don't think the issue is as black and white as most seem
| to.
|
| I think the app store is a tool and I think it is a
| powerful and useful tool. Can the tool be used for good?
| of course. Can it also be used for bad? most definitely.
| Can it be wielded poorly? yes.
|
| I've used windows, linux, apple, and android, and I like
| Apple's environment the best. That environment is a
| consequence of apples choices. _Apple limits my choices
| and I like that._ I like having less choices. I don 't
| want to have to think about software security, I want to
| think about how to spend time with my friends, and apple
| is a an environment that lets me think about how best to
| spend time with friends instead of thinking about
| software security.
|
| Apple's restriction of my choices benefits me. I want
| apple to restrict my choices. I want there to be only one
| way to get apps on my device. That simplifies my life. I
| will pay more to have a more simple life. I will pay
| someone else to make better choices than I can make with
| my limited time. I _want_ to do that.
|
| If you don't like that, then don't use Apple. There is a
| perfectly working alternative to apple that you can use
| if you want to experience other choices. Apple has a
| monopoly on apple devices, but apple by no means has a
| monopoly on smart phones. I'm not sure there are even any
| major apps exclusive to apple. Apple is better because
| apple has more money to spend.
|
| > Microsoft is able to do the same thing with Windows
| Defender without using the App Store model at all.
|
| If apple scanned the apps I side-loaded and reported
| information about them to their servers that would upset
| me, that feels like a privacy violation.
|
| Apple's bullying of companies with monopoly power to
| force privacy labels won me over greatly. They have a lot
| of good will for that. If apple continues to do things
| like that, I will continue to support an app store
| monopoly.
| revelio wrote:
| It's an absurd argument. If you want to only install app
| store apps, then only install apps from the store. That's
| still possible you know, even if other people aren't
| forced to. That's why these arguments always boil down to
| bullshit about how you will be "forced" to use Facebook
| from outside the store and that would be terrible because
| being on Facebook on an iPhone is a human right or
| something.
|
| If you like Apple telling you what to do, fine. Choose
| only from their menu.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| If you don't like apple telling you what to do, use
| Android?
|
| Apple products are the consequences of Apples decisions,
| you want what Apple produces but reject their decisions.
|
| What if Apple's phone is better _because_ it is a closed
| ecosystem?
| revelio wrote:
| Nobody is saying that. They're saying use an iPhone and
| then don't sideload apps. Easy!
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Apple limits my choices and I like that. I like having
| less choices. I don't want to have to think about
| software security
|
| How does this conflict with other users having a
| developer mode? Because you want Apple to have more
| unilateral authority over what other businesses are and
| aren't allowed to do?
|
| It sounds like you have left the domain of "what's right
| for the market" and headed into the realm of "what I
| prefer". That's fine and decent anecdata, but completely
| useless to regulators who's job is to save the market. If
| Apple is stifling innovation or competition, even for a
| good cause, then we must codify the goodness and end the
| monopoly. That's progress, arbitrary corporate grudges
| are not.
| ihatepython wrote:
| I used to think like you, but not anymore. I am not
| interested in installing random software from other people, I
| want to install my own software to be able to have full
| control over my own device.
|
| I don't care about 'regular users'. I care about myself.
| auggierose wrote:
| You can do that already.
| kaba0 wrote:
| If you own a mac, run a specific software at least once a
| week, and limited to like 3 apps. For all practical
| purposes, this means "you can't".
| ihatepython wrote:
| Not only do you have to own a mac, you have to keep
| everything updated to the latest version. This is
| problematic, considering that the OS gets worse and worse
| with every release, and some things break with new
| versions.
| auggierose wrote:
| > If you own a Mac
|
| If you own an iPhone, it's actually very practical to
| also have a Mac.
|
| > run a specific software at least once a week, and
| limited to like 3 apps.
|
| What?
| kaba0 wrote:
| You get a license for a week only (without paying for a
| dev account), and has a limit of concurrently signing at
| most 7 apps (my parameters might not be exactly correct,
| but are roughly this), but a single application might
| require multiple signatures.
|
| The most common way to make all this signing a bit more
| bearable is to have AltStore installed on your mac, which
| will automatically re-signs the select few apps you want
| in some hacky way (needs your Apple id and password).
| auggierose wrote:
| The most common way is to pay $99 and use Xcode. I think
| in the long run, limiting the freedom of developers to
| choose whichever tools they like is actually hurting
| Apple, but let's not pretend that there is no practical
| way of running your own software on iOS.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > The most common way is to pay $99 and use Xcode.
|
| Don't you find it ridiculous that the "common" way to run
| software written by you on a $1k device that you bought
| is via buying $2k machine and paying 99$ yearly?
| akvadrako wrote:
| Is that were true there would be no need for a European
| version, since sideloading is about a "practical way of
| running your own software".
| auggierose wrote:
| My answers refer to ihatepython's original comment, and
| own software is understood there as "software I develop
| myself". I am not talking about own software in the sense
| of software you obtained from other people, which is what
| sideloading is about.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| If I pay the fee and/or use something like altstore?
| auggierose wrote:
| Yes.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| So take five minutes to set up the parental controls on your
| children's devices. The idea that we should eliminate the
| ability to run arbitrary software "for the children" is
| completely ridiculous.
| simondotau wrote:
| Then don't buy an iPhone. I think it's ridiculous that we
| are asking the government to save us from our own choices.
|
| As much as you and I don't like it, what Apple is doing is
| perfectly legal. And as much as you or I might support a
| change in the law, you're not going to get my support if
| the legislation is truly universal and not just a narrow-
| band targeting of a single company for developing an
| ecosystem which resonated with a large number of people.
| Write some legislation which applies to ALL platforms which
| run software and maybe I'll take it seriously.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Sometimes our choices lead us to results that no one
| wanted. For a classical example, check out "tragedy of
| the commons". In those cases, you do want someone to
| enforce cooperation from outside, and this is what's
| happening to Apple now.
|
| > what Apple is doing is perfectly legal
|
| Not in the EU starting this summer!
|
| Although I agree with the second point: game consoles
| being general purpose computers should be treated the
| same.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Then don't buy an iPhone. I think it's ridiculous that
| we are asking the government to save us from our own
| choices.
|
| That's a great argument. I have even a better one:
|
| Don't dictate what and how people use their devices that
| they paid for with their hard-earned money.
| simondotau wrote:
| Yes it's your device, but it's not your software. You
| don't own the software. And it's the software which is
| stopping you from doing what you want.
|
| All software effectively "dictates" how a device works,
| whether you're talking about an OS or an app. If you buy
| an app, you don't get to decide how it works. You don't
| like it? Don't buy it. I don't see a big push for people
| crying to the government to stop Activision from
| dictating how to play Call of Duty.
|
| Apple doesn't dictate what software runs on your iPhone,
| any more than a toaster manufacturer dictates whether you
| can use it as a space heater, or Toyota dictating whether
| your car can function as a boat, or Epic Games dictating
| whether Fortnite can be used to prepare your taxes.
|
| It's true that Apple doesn't make the process of running
| your own software easy, but you are legally entitled to
| break whatever barriers you like and replace the OS with
| a Linux distro. Have at it. It's great. I support it. And
| if you want legislation that requires hardware
| manufacturers to provide documented paths for installing
| alternative operating system software, I'd support that
| legislation eight days a week.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > Then don't buy an iPhone
|
| Then don't enable side loading.
|
| And what Apple is doing is actually not perfectly legal.
| That's the entire reason they're changing their policies.
| It's not like they enjoy having to compete with app
| stores that offer other payment providers or allow things
| like emulators.
| simondotau wrote:
| I know how to not enable side-loading. There are a dozen
| friends and family members who I provide tech support to
| and I don't trust any of them to never follow the clearly
| written instructions which Epic will provide showing how
| to sideload Fortnite onto their phone.
|
| Sure, maybe Epic can be trusted. But perhaps Meta decides
| that the latest/most desirable versions of Facebook,
| Instagram and WhatsApp have to be side-loaded. Now it's
| commonplace. Now everyone's phone has sideloaded apps
| installed.
|
| Sure, maybe Meta can be trusted. But perhaps some new
| future TikTok-esque craze besets the mainstream, and it's
| in the form of a sideloaded app, made easy because
| sideloaded apps aren't unusual, and the company who makes
| this viral app is dodgy as f***.
|
| But sure, it's always the user's choice.
| malermeister wrote:
| It's not "the government saving us from our own choices".
|
| It's us asking our democratically elected government to
| stop a giant corporation from telling us what to do with
| our own devices.
| simondotau wrote:
| I like how you say that as though I hadn't already
| considered that point. Would it be too much to ask to
| perhaps give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm already
| aware of all of the major arguments for why Apple should
| allow sideloading?
|
| Yes it's your device, but it's not your software. You
| don't own the software. And it's the software which is
| stopping you from doing what you want.
|
| Really though I'm just saying that I resent arguments
| that fail to provide anything resembling a modicum of
| consistency around this. As far as I'm concerned, as long
| as Sony is allowed to keep the PlayStation locked down,
| Apple should have equal right to keep the iPhone locked
| down. And if you, the consumer, doesn't like it, _don 't
| buy a PlayStation._ I realise this comes across as a
| trite, throwaway thing to say, but I absolutely mean it.
| It is, in my opinion, a slam dunk argument.
| malermeister wrote:
| I think if you own the device, you _do_ own the software,
| or framed the opposite way, if you don 't own the
| software, you don't own the device
|
| What you're proposing is not really ownership of the
| device in any meaningful way, but just a license to use
| it on somebody else's terms.
|
| I don't want a world in which I don't own the device I
| pay for, so neither Sony nor Apple should be able to
| dictate what I do with them.
|
| It's like selling you a screwdriver and then saying you
| can only use it with one specific brand of screw.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > As far as I'm concerned, as long as Sony is allowed to
| keep the PlayStation locked down.
|
| I'm sure that now that the EU has finally woken up,
| gaming platforms will be under scrunity too. Mobile
| phones are a much more critical part of people's lives
| than game consoles, so it made sense to target them
| first.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > I think it's ridiculous that we are asking the
| government to save us from our own choices.
|
| So you think it's better asking companies to save us from
| our own choices? And that doesn't strike you as even more
| ridiculous?
| mrighele wrote:
| > As much as you and I don't like it, what Apple is doing
| is perfectly legal.
|
| Well, not in EU now
| kaba0 wrote:
| And how exactly the AppStore prevents it? By using the OSs
| sandbox, which will apply the exact same way to user
| installed programs -- you won't suddenly run as root.
|
| AppStore checking is waaay overhyped as anything meaningful.
| alerighi wrote:
| But it's an user choice! Same happens on Android. There is a
| settings that you have to enable to install applications from
| other sources.
|
| This is pure nonsense... giving user more choices is never a
| bad thing.
| daveidol wrote:
| We should probably get rid of Safari / web browsers too in
| that case!
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| I used to think _that_ way, but then I realized the Android
| /iOS stores are absolute cesspools. I would not trust young
| kids on there either.
|
| Others are right, sandboxing is the real saving grace (and
| only if apps dont ask for a bajillion permissions which users
| will just click through so it will work). Apple is slowly
| trying to isolate apps even more, like they were in the early
| iOS days.
| davnicwil wrote:
| The issue with such a statement is that the terms can and do
| mean different things to different people. I probably have a
| similar definition of computer and application as you, but many
| people, maybe the majority, may not.
|
| For one thing they might think of a phone as a fundamentally
| different thing from a 'computer' with a different role. In
| fact I strongly suspect this is the majority view.
|
| Within that people probably think of an 'application' as
| fundamentally a pre-screened, pre-approved, piece of software
| to enable some function specifically on the phone and within
| the phone's ecosystem. Not as any arbitrary piece of software.
| In fact that might all be seen as a feature, not a limitation,
| in the majority of people's eyes. Again I strongly suspect that
| is the case.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| From a personal-computer-user point of view, installing an app
| from any source is normal.
|
| For pre-iPhone cellphone users, your cellphone network operator
| controlled access to what apps were available for installation.
| This is was the most common, if not the only, method for
| cellphone app distribution. App makers (mostly java games) paid
| to get on that first page of downloadable apps. I'd add some
| references but Google seems to have amnesia about anything
| cellphone app distribution pre-iPhone.
|
| Apple didn't have an app store initially. How Apple convinced
| cellphone network operators to cede app approval/control, I
| don't know. Perhaps it was "apple's way - take it or leave it".
| black3r wrote:
| On most pre-iPhone cellphones you could install any .jar
| file, but there were 2 challenges:
|
| Finding a .jar file that works on your phone was the biggest.
| Games often only supported a single screen resolution and so
| there were multiple .jar files for each game and you had to
| find the right one for your phone. Also sometimes even if you
| had the right screen resolution the .jar just crashed when
| you started it without any clue as to what's wrong (probably
| they needed more RAM or some platform specific code, but I
| was in high school back then so I didn't know much more about
| it)
|
| In the early days, there was also the issue of how to get
| that .jar file to your phone. I distinctly remember old Nokia
| phones could download them through WAP (which was paid) or
| receive them through IrDA/Bluetooth, but themselves couldn't
| send applications through IrDA/Bluetooth (I think Sony
| Ericssons were the ones which could also send them....), This
| issue was later solved by microSD cards and USB cable
| transfers from PC.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I've never had much trouble finding compatible JAR/JAD
| files from legitimate sources. Usually, either your phone's
| model was auto detected to serve a compatible file, or you
| could select an appropriate version for apps that had
| resolution limitations.
|
| Pirated JAR/JAD files were definitely hit and miss, but I
| don't think those are a great example.
| simondotau wrote:
| Personal computers really are the exception which proves the
| rule. Whether it's the software in your TV, your pre-smart
| phone, your car, or your game console, locked down has always
| been the norm.
| ckolkey wrote:
| The pc predates all of your examples, so I don't think it
| makes sense to say "has always been the norm". Has _become_
| the norm, perhaps, but thats the entire point. It's not
| great that it has.
| simondotau wrote:
| Being first doesn't make an example the most canonical.
| JD557 wrote:
| It was the most common, but not the only method. You could
| (at least on Nokia phones) go to any wap site and download a
| .jad/.jar straight to your phone. I did that a lot on my
| series 30 (3510i).
|
| I think other manufacturers allowed that as well, but I could
| only use the "free wap browsing trick" on Nokia phones, so I
| never explored that.
| alerighi wrote:
| Pre-iPhone phones, for example Nokia phones with Symbian on
| it, did allow you to install applications. I remember when I
| was in middle school with a Nokia N70 exchanging games with
| Bluetooth with my friends. Who had internet at home (that was
| only a bunch of people) did download games from forums and
| then send to everyone else, as well as music and videos. Same
| for other models of cellphones, they all had some sort of
| application format.
|
| Then the first Android devices arrived, with the Android
| Market (long before Google Play) that did allow you to
| download apps. But most people again maybe they didn't have
| internet, or more simply wanted pay apps but didn't want to
| pay for them, just exchanged .apk like it was the norm.
| (Pirating by the way was much more present than these days,
| for example I don't recall a single person having a
| PlayStation without the modchip, and burned PS1/PS2 games
| where the norm).
|
| It's only with the arrival of the iPhone that this was no
| longer possible. In fact I recall that the criticism of the
| first iPhones, till the iPhone 4, was that it was an
| overpriced device and that it did lack of the possibility to
| install applications and exchange files with bluetooth, like
| everyone was used to do. The iPhone was a niche product that
| was not diffused (when I was at high school I recall maybe
| 1/2 people having iPhones, all other one Android devices).
|
| The thing on cellphone operators is maybe an US specific
| thing, I don't recall having anything like that in Europe,
| more specifically in Italy. Quite frankly till 10 years ago
| using the cellphone network for internet was unthinkable,
| because the prices where so high. Then arrived the contract
| that give you 100Gb of data a month for 10 euros, but back in
| the day internet was expensive, to the fact that just by
| pressing the internet button on a phone it did consume all
| your credit. This is probably also the reason why WhatsApp
| become so popular (you could chat with your home internet
| connection that now everyone had without consuming expensive
| SMS)
| counttheforks wrote:
| More proof that Apple should be broken up. Split them in two, a
| hardware company and a software company.
| xenonite wrote:
| Ingenious!
|
| What if a security incident happens just in Europe but not
| elsewhere?
|
| Then it becomes instantly clear that Apple's argument against
| sideloading was not a strawman.
| tigrezno wrote:
| hasn't happened on android with sideloaded apps. Stop
| fearmongering.
| vultour wrote:
| Android has so much malware in the play store the argument is
| moot.
| xenonite wrote:
| Android is another system, and yes, there have been breaches.
|
| Lets say it like that, and I know I am simplifying quite a
| bit:
|
| Apple checks security at "compile time", during the App Store
| checks.
|
| Android checks security only (or mostly?) during "run time".
|
| "Compile time" can give good guarantees because the "compile
| time" can quite long. Then, during program execution, there
| need to be less run time checks (and a program can be much
| faster, by the way).
|
| What do you think happens when allowing sideloading on Apple
| iOS devices? Suppose there are much less run time checks
| available because compile time checks are expected?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Good.
|
| I personally agree with Apple's stance. I don't want developers
| of popular apps to be able to bypass Apple's reviews and push
| dark patterns on users.
|
| Before anyone talks about choice, I see this as akin to minimum
| wages and union memberships. There are some limitations of
| choices that often end up being beneficial to the average person.
| From the point of view of the user (if not the app developer)
| Apple's walled garden provides me what I want.
|
| If I wanted something more open, I would have gone with Android.
|
| I am happy that Europe's short-sightedness will not affect me.
| scrollaway wrote:
| "Apple using its monopolistic power in anticompetitive ways is
| like a government enforcing a minimum wage, suck it Europeans"
|
| Are you for real or is this some kind of 5d satire?
| sfe22 wrote:
| It kind of makes sense. Both are closed systems that place
| rules what is good or bad for their members. If we cannot
| trust a person to choose whether a certain salary is good or
| bad for them, why would we trust them to decide what apps are
| good or bad for them?
| overthrow wrote:
| The minimum wage is beneficial because employers tend to
| have more leverage than employees in the relationship. It's
| actually similar to the leverage Apple has over its users.
| And they've used that leverage to control what apps people
| are allowed to use. So the EU forcing Apple to let users
| install apps serves a similar purpose as the minimum wage -
| both are curtailing potential abuses against a group of
| people with little power in their situation.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| The same logic applies. Users have less leverage over
| popular apps. Hence they rely on someone who has more
| leverage over the app developers (Apple) to shift the
| balance on their favor.
|
| Note that most of the complaints about Apple's ecosystem
| are from developers, not from actual users.
| Krssst wrote:
| > I personally agree with Apple's stance. I don't want
| developers of popular apps to be able to bypass Apple's reviews
| and push dark patterns on users.
|
| They just have to make it hard to install apps outside the
| store, then apps that don't follow Apple's model won't get much
| of an install base and will have to comply anyway in the end.
|
| Also, Android users seem to be discriminated in America for
| some reason (the green/blue bubble BS) , so the choice between
| Android and iOS is not as free as it seems.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-23 23:01 UTC)