[HN Gopher] Apple blocks PC emulator in iOS App Store and third-...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple blocks PC emulator in iOS App Store and third-party app
stores
Author : ajdude
Score : 338 points
Date : 2024-06-10 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| oneplane wrote:
| Yes, we know. (from earlier:)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40627155 It's not
| surprising.
| justin66 wrote:
| Odd that Apple gets a veto over what can go into a third-party
| app store.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Almost as if the third-party app store is not really an
| independent third party.
| Hamuko wrote:
| It's not that odd considering that they made their approval aka
| notarization an explicit requirement for non-App Store apps.
| They also have that same veto power for all apps on macOS,
| although tech savvy users can bypass that veto.
| justin66 wrote:
| > they made their approval aka notarization an explicit
| requirement for non-App Store apps
|
| I mean, okay, but that's just another thing that seems odd. I
| don't know why anyone is calling it a "third party" app store
| in that case.
| intrasight wrote:
| Why do you think it odd? It makes total sense to me that they
| decide what software is allowed on their device.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Whose device is it again? It doesn't belong to the person who
| paid for it? Are computers a subscription product now?
| dylan604 wrote:
| shhh, don't put it in writing like that.
| gray_-_wolf wrote:
| It is not their device... Or at least it should not be.
| grishka wrote:
| It stops being their device once they sell it to you.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| I don't like this PC as a service era.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| I can't believe some people think this way. When did MY phone
| become THEIR device?
| wiseowise wrote:
| > their device.
| pquki4 wrote:
| Did you read this comment twice yourself to see the problem?
| darby_nine wrote:
| I don't understand why there isn't appetite to simply regulate
| them out of controlling what software you put on your device.
|
| I've been using Macs my whole life (since the early nineties) and
| I'm as loyal a user as anyone. I've given them probably enough
| money to put down a downpayment on a small house. Behavior like
| this _will_ drive me away if it cannot be addressed, even if it
| means I have to go to china to find a better hardware vendor.
| oneplane wrote:
| Maybe someone will. Either way, such a move would break their
| business model, and you'd end up with just another android
| which is not what the market wants (because if they did, Apple
| would have gone out of business already).
|
| I was looking for an earlier thread (which also involved Nokia
| and Windows Mobile) which shows the sort of timelines/cascading
| effects you'd have where vendors generally either become overly
| generic or just outright fail (i.e. BlackBerry). When I'll find
| it I'll edit and add it here.
|
| Edit: didn't find it yet, but there are variations on appliance
| vs. general purpose hardware where things like smart TVs and
| android phone bootloaders are used as similar examples. I wish
| I had a better timeline search for threads.
| shaan7 wrote:
| That is an interesting take, so basically in your opinion the
| main thing that makes iOS better than Android is that Apple
| has tighter control over the apps? What I've heard from most
| iOS users is other things like smoother interface, better
| battery life, great camera etc. I've never heard "I like
| iPhone because Apple moderates the App Store" from laymen
| (i.e. non-HN crowd).
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Why do you think the battery life is better?! Do people not
| get cause and effect? Ability to deny crap apps and ability
| to control what can run in background surely helps!
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| You say that as if deleting crapware isn't possible on
| any other platform. We've been doing it for decades.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| GMS is most of power waste in android. Deleting it makes
| the phone borderline useless.
| shaan7 wrote:
| I'd argue that your latter point (optimizing background
| apps) is majority of the improvement and this is
| something you can do in the OS regardless of where an app
| comes from (excluding rooted/jailbroken devices from
| scope). This would've been a reasonable argument if Apple
| only ever denied apps because they did stupid things, not
| because they offered a payment gateway that did not pay
| Apple commission. Lets not pretend that Apple's control
| is only about curating an experience for the user, it is
| very significantly about maximizing profit as well.
|
| As a side note, I've always understood that just stock
| iOS is way more optimized than stock Android simply
| because of better engineering. However, this is anecdotal
| and I don't have any references as such.
| katbyte wrote:
| I'll chime in as one of them (and in every thread about
| this many more people do as well) - it's one of the many
| things I like about an iPhone, the tighter control and gate
| keeping Apple does on the App Store. I like not having to
| worry so much on the App Store or wade through scams etc (I
| know there's not none but seems less and it's easy to find
| the apps I want) and for my parents and less tech savvy
| friends it's great
|
| But personally it comes down to it's a phone not a computer
| to me and I don't want to or care if I can run "anything"
| on it.
| Suppafly wrote:
| The lack of scam apps and crappy clones is the only real
| advantage that appeals to me. On the Play store you can
| type in the exact name of an app that someone has told
| you and it'll show you a whole page of fake and copycat
| apps.
| smarnach wrote:
| I've never seen that. can you give me an example search
| term?
| stefan_ wrote:
| I love the tight control Apple keeps on the app store,
| just last week it forced an app update on me that deleted
| all my OTP keys, because the OTP app was bought by some
| malware vendor and I didn't get prompted that this prior
| personal project was now controlled by a literal scam
| artist company prior to them pushing an update. Their
| commitment to safety goes so far I can neither inspect
| the data saved by the app nor look at the app binary
| itself, can you help me understand how that makes the
| iPhone app store secure?
| literallyroy wrote:
| What app was this?
| wiseowise wrote:
| Probably Raivo, but it was acquired a year ago, not a
| week ago.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I love that Apple has a tight control over the _App Store_
| , but I would love to just shove whatever I want on a
| device I own and if it blows up on me, more the fool I.
| omnimus wrote:
| Its also a myth. Apple has so much trash in app store...
| including scams and direct decompiled copies of apps. Its
| probably better than Google Play but lets not pretend they
| care about the app quality - otherwise they wouldnt be
| banning and kicking high quality apps left and right.
| brg wrote:
| It's not a myth. Every week my parents or children
| request I'd remove malware or adware from their android
| device that they installed. On my other children's tablet
| or family iPhone this has never been a problem once.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think we'd have to ask some non-technical people about
| this really, but I think there's a nebulous perception that
| the Apple App Store is, like, somehow safer and good, while
| the Google one is somehow less safe and not good. The
| specific details, not so well understood.
| amelius wrote:
| > so basically in your opinion the main thing that makes
| iOS better than Android is that Apple has tighter control
| over the apps?
|
| What Apple loves to make us believe is that Vendor,
| AppStore and ContentFilter are not three entirely
| orthogonal concepts that can be totaly separated from each
| other.
|
| You can have:
|
| - Company A be the hardware Vendor
|
| - Company B host the App Store
|
| - Company C be the provider of the ContentFilter
| funkyfourier wrote:
| Non-technical iOS users probably don't give a flying crap and
| would not even know if it was possible to download a PC
| emulator from a third party app store. The iPhone does lots
| of things right, and having some obscure options which only
| the technical crowd cares about will not change that.
|
| To become another Android iOS would have to be licensed to
| other vendors and appear on cheaply made devices dragging its
| name through the mud.
| aeyes wrote:
| What's your point? If nobody cares about it then let the
| app on the app store.
| immibis wrote:
| If you want to be able to run your software, on your
| device, buy an Android or Linux or even Windows device.
| Anything but Apple. The dollars don't lie: for some
| reason, people _want_ to be controlled.
| mirsadm wrote:
| Except they don't. Some might and they seem intent on
| telling everybody else how it's the best option for them.
| Just let me install whatever I want. My choice if it
| explodes.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I already bought an iPhone dude. I'm not dishing out
| another grand just to install Android.
| wiseowise wrote:
| What the hell are you talking about? I buy iPhone despite
| it being locked-down piece of shit garden, not because of
| it.
| linguae wrote:
| There are other reasons to buy an iPhone. I loathe the App
| Store's restrictions, and this is a showstopper for me
| regarding the iPad, which would've been Alan Kay's Dynabook
| if it weren't for being limited to the App Store. However,
| I'm willing to tolerate a restricted app environment on a
| phone, though I wouldn't mind a less restrictive experience.
| Ignoring the App Store, I find iOS to be more polished than
| Android, and I also like how Apple provides OS updates for
| its iPhones for roughly five years. I'm on my third iPhone (a
| 14 Pro) after using an SE and a 7; I switched to the iPhone
| SE after two years of using a Google Nexus, which I loved and
| was disappointed when Google discontinued it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Tight control isn't the only thing that defines iOS. I hate
| Google (and on my android phones i don't log in with a Google
| account). I would go with apple for more privacy. But their
| strict control of the platform is unacceptable for me.
|
| This is the problem with the current duopoly. Both options
| are pretty terrible.
|
| I think it's great what the EU is doing though they're
| leaving too many loopholes for Apple to weasel through. And I
| think they should be attacking Google much harder.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > which is not what the market wants
|
| I'm sure the market wants more than two providers.
|
| > (because if they did, Apple would have gone out of business
| already).
|
| The market of "low hanging fruit."
|
| > or just outright fail (i.e. BlackBerry).
|
| AT&T made a deal with Apple which should have been stopped by
| regulators.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I'm having trouble finding the perfect way to articulate the
| idea, so here's the half-assed version.
|
| _Whatever it is that I, and everyone, likes about iPhones
| /iPads, it has absolutely nothing to do with Apple deciding
| that I'm too stupid to get to override what software to
| install on it._
| leptons wrote:
| The DOJ is suing Apple in an antitrust lawsuit for this very
| reason (among many other anticompetitive reasons)
| asimovfan wrote:
| Weren't they literally like this since the first iphone?
| dylan604 wrote:
| They were like this from the first Mac. Woz wanted the Mac to
| be open like the Apple II, but Jobs wanted it closed. Jobs
| won. That's how Apple has been ever since. The crazy days of
| Mac clones got shut down quick upon Jobs' return. It is just
| not in the Jobs' Apple's DNA to be open. Why this is
| confusing to anyone is just a sign of not understanding
| history. If you want open, Apple is not your platform. That's
| fine, move along. It's a dead horse.
| rchaud wrote:
| In 2007, you couldn't run more than one app at a time on the
| puny 128MB of RAM the iPhone came with.
|
| Today, iPhones are now more powerful than a lot of computers,
| yet those computers can run rings around iOS in terms of
| doing actual computer stuff.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| (I'm an American speaking about Americans)
|
| Because to non-technical people, iPhones are a sparkling clean
| oasis in deceitful confusing crime ridden cryptic hell-hole.
|
| You might think I am simping for Apple, but my stance is
| identical to yours. However I have the situation in my life of
| being surrounded primarily regular people. I don't live in a
| tech bubble or work in a tech job. My rants against apple are
| notorious, and I have largely stopped, because I can see how
| ignorant yet still apathetic people are about it.
|
| Just a short story to encapsulate it:
|
| On a recent trip with lots of friends we ended using my phone
| for most group shots and other nice pictures. The Pixel's
| camera really does shine.
|
| However when it came time to share those pictures, I informed
| everyone it would be best to get google photos where we could
| all dump the hundreds of pictures into one communal album. This
| was quickly met with "What? I don't want to deal with that, why
| don't we just share them the regular way?" (imessage).
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The greatest thing I ever did to help non technical people is
| to make sure they all have adblockers. I can only install
| ublock on android firefox and this is why I never recommend
| iphones. Too much malvertisement crap that apple won't let me
| block.
| vundercind wrote:
| iOS has had ad blocking for years now. This was true quite
| a while ago, yeah.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| "Acceptable ads" is such a crock. In terms of trust it's
| ublock or nothing.
| vundercind wrote:
| ??? I don't think my ad blocker has an "acceptable ads"
| list.
|
| I don't mean something from Apple--maybe they have one,
| but that's not what I'm using.
| lloeki wrote:
| I will naively assume you are commenting in earnest and
| have missed the (old) news, which is most certainly what
| GP is referring to: https://developer.apple.com/documenta
| tion/safariservices/cre...
|
| Examples of content blockers (not just ad blocking):
|
| - AdGuard: https://apps.apple.com/app/adguard-adblock-
| privacy/id1047223...
|
| - Hush: https://apps.apple.com/app/hush-nag-
| blocker/id1544743900
|
| - Wipr: https://apps.apple.com/app/wipr/id1030595027
|
| - Vinegar: https://apps.apple.com/app/vinegar-tube-
| cleaner/id1591303229
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| Orion browser for iOS allows both chrome and firefox
| extensions to be installed on iphones. (for now anyway, I'm
| sure apple will yeet them whenever they find out about it)
|
| You need to change some settings first, but it worked when
| I put the firefox version of ublock origin on a phone.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I felt the same way but Orion browser (made by the Kagi
| people) can run android extensions including Ublock!
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| If it's chromium based have they committed to supporting
| manifest v2 after chrome kills it?
| brightlancer wrote:
| My understanding from Brave is that this year Google is
| essentially disabling v2 add-ons, but the code will still
| be in Chromium (for other things Google does), so Brave
| can just re-enable it.
|
| But Brave expects that Google will actually pull the code
| out of Chromium next year -- when that happens, it is
| unlikely anyone else will have the time to maintain
| patches to put it back in.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I have my DNS on my android phone set to dns.adguard.com,
| which has the benefit of blocking ads in even "free"
| apps/games that are littered with them. This works even on
| mobile data, so it's better than even a pihole.
|
| I wanted to do the same to my boyfriend's iPhone after
| seeing him sit through probably a dozen ads in one sitting
| with all the free games he has downloaded, but I found out
| that Apple literally does not allow you to change your DNS
| for mobile networks, and you have to manually change it for
| each wifi network. Weird for a company that claims to
| prioritize "privacy".
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > However when it came time to share those pictures, I
| informed everyone it would be best to get google photos where
| we could all dump the hundreds of pictures into one communal
| album. This was quickly met with "What? I don't want to deal
| with that, why don't we just share them the regular way?"
| (imessage).
|
| My family, including myself, all have iPhones. We've done
| exactly this for our family trips to the Black Hills and
| Ozarks over the last couple years, but we just share them
| with Apple's shared albums. It works exactly the same as
| Google's shared albums but with the iMessage and other
| iOS/macOS integration niceties. That could be why your family
| didn't want to download another app to do what's "already
| built in" to the phone, so to speak.
|
| Just speculating, you know your family better than I ever
| could obviously.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| They are not even aware that iMessage or Apple shared
| albums are even an iPhone exclusive feature. They don't
| even know what iMessage is. The whole iPhone experience is
| so seamless that for me to suggest alternate apps doesn't
| even make sense. Like telling someone they need to get a
| coffee maker when they have a brand new keurig right in
| front of them. The statement is more confusing than
| informative to them.
|
| To them, the reason I can't send them pictures is because
| Android phones suck. Which they complain about with
| "Anytime an android sends me a picture it looks like shit".
| malermeister wrote:
| That's exactly what the EU's DMA does. It tends to get a lot of
| flak here for some reason.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Will it though? It's not like it's new behavior from them.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > I don't understand why there isn't appetite to simply
| regulate them out of controlling what software you put on your
| device.
|
| I think this is what the EU is basically doing but Apple is
| trying to work around that by minimally implementing 3rd party
| app stores in a way that still gives them control to see if
| they can get away with that (they probably won't be able to).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Because media and game console publishers don't want you to be
| able to run games they haven't distributed (because they force
| game developers to work with game publishers, and game
| publishers to agree to all sorts of terms), or programs that
| can access media and games in a way they don't want you to.
|
| If you think Apple is bad, wait until you see Sony's terms for
| publishing a crossplatform game on Playstation (Xbox is a bit
| better.) The agreement they force publishers to sign has all
| sorts of stipulations, including rules that require payments
| when PSN users spend more on the PC version of a game than they
| do the Playstation version, and a prohibition on moving
| purchased cosmetics to accounts on other platforms.
|
| Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft - all of them would be dead set
| against third party stores. So would all the media
| conglomerates (that Sony doesn't own.)
|
| Many software developers would also be against it. If you sell
| an app on the iOS store, you're virtually guaranteed it won't
| be pirated. That guarantee goes away the second iOS devices can
| use third party stores and run any app.
|
| That TPM chip in every x86 system? That isn't there for you,
| friend (although now it can be used to store FDE keys.) TPM was
| for storing the keys to decrypt media files.
|
| People seem to keep forgetting that many of the security
| systems in MacOS and Windows aren't designed for _your_
| security, but the security of licensed content.
| m463 wrote:
| With trust, trade is unrestricted.
|
| But when you don't have trust, trade doesn't happen.
|
| It's ironic. When apple first introduced the ios app store
| (decades ago) I thought "wow, they will protect me from the
| nonsense". But over time I learned, they don't really protect,
| there is still nonsense, and further they remove the ability to
| protect myself from the nonsense (you can't firewall your phone
| or detect/prevent network access by apps)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| EU DMA was supposed to do exactly that, which is why they're
| talking about Notarization, but Apple is maliciously half-
| complying. The good news is that the DMA also has specific
| legal penalties for this kind of half-compliance[0], the bad
| news is that the EU is a slow and bureaucratic organization so
| who knows when that will actually be enforced.
|
| [0] oddly enough called "anti-circumvention provisions", which
| is fucking hilarious
| kelthuzad wrote:
| If Apple can block what's on "independent" third-party app
| stores, then the letter of the DMA may be violated or not, but
| its spirit is most certainly violated. Hope the EU cracks down on
| such malicious compliance.
| outside2344 wrote:
| Pretty clear anti-competitive activity
| malermeister wrote:
| Yeah there's no way this is gonna fly.
| speedylight wrote:
| Lawyers don't care about the spirit of any law, it's the
| language that matters!
| HaZeust wrote:
| That's right. There's something I always say: "Lawyers are
| only purposivists when it benefits them, and textualists at
| any other avenue."
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Doesn't that depend on the venue? I thought I had read that
| some European member states had more subjective intent
| based enforcement?
| omnimus wrote:
| Yes US and European justice systems differ in this quite
| a bit.
| TillE wrote:
| The DMA repeatedly requires gatekeepers to act in a "fair,
| reasonable and non-discriminatory" manner. The "spirit" is
| very much baked into the language.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Obligatory IANAL and speaking mainly from an American
| understanding.
|
| "Fair", "reasonable", and "non-discriminatory" all have
| clearly defined legal definitions, which are not
| necessarily aligned with commonly understood or dictionary-
| defined definitions.
|
| The only thing that ultimately matters is the letter of the
| law. If the letter is contrary to the spirit, the law
| should be rewritten.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Now you know why the USA* exists. Welcome to Europe,
| where you are both more free than the USA and less free
| at the same time.
|
| * I assume you mean the USA when you say America, as both
| the North American and South American continents have
| many countries.
| gpsx wrote:
| What country do you say you are from, Kingdom of Normway?
| Federal Republic of Germany? Peoples Republic of China?
| Commonwealth of Australia?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I mean, yes?
|
| America exists because we couldn't stand Europe, and
| we've had to go back there at least several times to fix
| the mess y'all keep dispensing before we just said "Fuck
| it." after witnessing WW2 and made our presence permanent
| for the forseeable future.
|
| Now that I got the snark out of my system, I personally
| prefer a legal system everyone will agree on even if not
| everyone will like it.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Heh, I'm from the US actually; moved to the Netherlands
| before shit got weird there. Every time I go back to
| visit friends and family, I get a reverse culture shock.
|
| The legal system here is mind-blowing compared to the US.
| My son got beat up by some thug-teenager for being from
| the US (the teen was Afghan, so makes sense why he would
| feel that way, but to take it out on a 6 year old is
| kinda fucked up). Anyway, watching that play out was very
| interesting.
|
| Even just dealing with employee background checks is
| interesting in that only certain crimes (relevant to the
| work you are asking them to do) show up. So if an
| embezzler wants to go into childcare, nothing would show
| up (probably, I haven't actually done that, so I have no
| idea for this specific example, it's just an example).
|
| It's so fascinating... but if you are ever looking for a
| way out of the US: Dutch-American Friendship Treaty is a
| way.
| anthk wrote:
| Nazi laws were created and inspired from Canadian and US
| racist laws/eugenic acts.
|
| So, guess which ideology generated that German/Austrian
| monster.
|
| Thank Jim Crow for that.
| seventyone wrote:
| Yes, the courts will lean on legal dictionaries such as
| Black's Law Dictionary and Ballentine's Law Dictionary.
|
| reasonable. Not extreme. Not arbitrary, capricious, or
| confiscatory. Public Service Com, v Haverneyer, 296 US
| 506, 80 L Ed 357, 56 S Ct 360.
|
| "What is reasonable depends upon a variety of
| considerations and circumstances. It is an elastic term
| which is of uncertain value in a definition." Sussex Land
| & Live Stock Co. v Midwest Refining Co. (CA8 Wyo) 294 F
| 597, 34 ALR 249, 257.
| layer8 wrote:
| European courts often do.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| EU is much more about the spirit of the law than American law
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| This is such an obvious violation that I think Apple is testing
| it on purpose. They gain nothing by blocking this specific app.
| Maybe they just want to see what they can do.
| derefr wrote:
| > They gain nothing by blocking this specific app.
|
| I dunno, I think there's an obvious thing Apple would be
| worried about by allowing PC emulators on iOS (iPadOS
| specifically): the only thing that stops an iPad Pro from
| being the only computer of, say, a software engineer these
| days, is that iPadOS doesn't function as an non-inter-app-
| sandboxed parallel-multitasking development platform in the
| way that a desktop OS does.
|
| But a (performant) PC emulator on iPadOS would fix that. You
| could buy an iPad Pro with a keyboard case, boot up a Windows
| or Linux (or maybe even macOS) VM, and work inside that --
| running shells, editors/IDEs, compilers, Docker containers,
| etc. And then swipe back over to (less-heavyweight) iPad apps
| when you're just taking notes / watching videos.
|
| Honestly, it's something I've personally wanted for a long
| time. Despite loving my laptop, I'd love to be able to pack
| only an iPad when travelling to e.g. conferences. Right now I
| can't, because what if prod goes down and I need to
| investigate + develop a critical bugfix + deploy it? If I
| could run a PC VM _on_ my iPad, I could do all that and more.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Would be very funny to see someone emulating a PC on an
| iPad to Linux so they can use Wine to run windows apps.
| dmonitor wrote:
| Use Wine to run Dolphin, running an SNES emulator,
| running the Gameboy player, playing Tetris
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Or more specifically, Doom implemented in Tetris.
| lawlessone wrote:
| When Nintendo sues, do they start at the top or the
| bottom of the stack?
| anthk wrote:
| There are public domain Tetris versions for the GB.
| NikkiA wrote:
| Nintendo legal is massively concurrent, and sues all
| simultaneously.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| I don't understand this:
|
| Would they rather someone buy a Thinkpad and run Linux on
| it, than someone buy an iPad and run Linux on it?
|
| What's there to be scared of someone buying their own
| hardware?
| derefr wrote:
| Apple would rather people buy an iPad _and_ a cheaper
| Mac, e.g. a Macbook Air. And many of their customers do
| -- despite only needing the Mac for one or two things.
|
| These customers, in my personal experience, mostly end up
| gravitating toward using the Mac more and the iPad less
| -- despite often saying they _enjoy_ using the iPad more.
| They _try_ to use the iPad for more things, but when
| there 's something they need to do on their laptop, they
| switch over to using it -- and then forget to switch
| back. Eventually, they give up on the "iPad experiment",
| and the iPad sits there gathering dust.
|
| But they still did _buy_ it. And likely have had it for
| long enough that they can 't just return it. And they
| might even (probably mistakenly) think they'll pick it up
| again someday, maybe when a new iPadOS update makes it
| more functional and solves their pain-points.
|
| And that line of thinking makes Apple very, very happy.
| "Buying an iPad you don't end up using because you also
| bought a Mac" is a situation Apple emphatically does
| _not_ want to help anyone avoid. In fact, they do
| everything they can in their advertising to subtly guide
| customers into bad expectations about iPadOS
| capabilities, so that they 'll end up in that situation.
| nine_k wrote:
| IPad is great for direct manipulation, such as drawing /
| painting / rearranging things visually. In this regard,
| it far outstrips any macbooks.
| hobs wrote:
| And outside of a very small portion of the user base, how
| much of most people's time is spent in those activities?
| talldayo wrote:
| And of _those_ people, how many of them would prefer
| full-fat Photoshop on a Surface Pro or drawing tablet?
| derefr wrote:
| Not many; the iPad Pro + Apple Pencil Pro is considered
| by many to be the best-in-class drawing tablet. And the
| Surface Pro frankly sucks for digital illustration --
| it's far less responsive, with far less control. The
| next-best option after an iPad Pro is a Wacom pad plugged
| into a PC.
|
| Also, there's no point in using Photoshop for drawing on
| a tablet. (It's not _impossible_ to use it for that, but
| it 's not what I'd call a _good_ experience.) You really
| want domain-specific digital-illustration software that
| puts the artist in direct control of brushes, color-
| mixing, and layers (either by direct-manipulation
| gestures, or in floating palettes, ring menus, etc); and
| then gets everything else out of the way (or doesn 't
| include it at all.) You use such software to draw the
| things you want, as separate layer-groups or images --
| and then, when you're done, you throw those drawings
| _into_ an app like Photoshop to clean them up, put them
| together, and otherwise transform your "drawings" into
| "artwork."
|
| If you're familiar with audio production: think of
| Photoshop as a DAW, and illustration as a performance.
| Even a solo musician doesn't touch their DAW _while_ they
| 're playing an instrument; the only thing they're
| touching _is their instrument_. Digital-illustration
| software is an instrument.
| talldayo wrote:
| FWIW, I have both a Wacom and a Surface Pro on-hand right
| now. The Wacom tablet is great (unbeaten latency-wise)
| but the Surface Pro has an equally nice digitizer and a
| perfectly usable screen. I took notes on it for a few
| years before moving to markdown and typing everything.
|
| The point I'm trying to make is that this artificial
| product category distinction people want to illustrate
| doesn't exist. Both of these hardware platforms can do
| both tasks equally well; all Apple has to do is provide
| both and let their customers decide for themselves. As
| time goes on, it feels increasingly easy to reverse-
| engineer Apple's design philosophy:
|
| - Identify a problem (I need to install apps; I need a
| heartrate monitor; I want to draw on my Mac)
|
| - Design a best-path solution (What if there was an app
| for that? What if _all_ your vitals were monitored? What
| if drawing was tactile?)
|
| - Take that solution and engineer it into an expensive
| auxiliary product (App Store/Developer Program; Apple
| Watch; Apple Pencil/iPad)
|
| - Deny competitors market access specifically so they
| can't fix self-imposed limitations (Still Apple refuses
| to sign benign apps; Apple Health is all-or-nothing
| without Apple Watch, competitors are scary and can't be
| trusted; touchscreen Macs are "impossible" and Apple
| Pencil can only be made by licensing our tech)
|
| Maybe I'm being too creative and optimistic, but are
| there not thousands of people on this site that would
| readily give up their Mac for an iPad with decent Linux
| support? The only person stopping people from having
| their cake and eating it too is Apple. And you _know_ it
| 's not because the iPad is in some way different from the
| Macbook and shouldn't have an open bootloader. It's
| because that would stop people from buying Macs. For the
| love of God, I hate Steve Jobs like the devil but I would
| probably go get a used iPad Pro if Apple announced they
| were publishing Linux drivers for it.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| They aren't all that scared of a small subset of geeks
| running Linux directly on their iPad and using that as a
| regular Linux-ey thing, I don't think. The number of
| people who want to do this is very small, and they don't
| expect any support for that. And that's not possible from
| the app store, anyway.
|
| But they've always been scared of emulators in the IOS
| app stores, and the reason for that seems to be a
| combination of things:
|
| 1. The user experience with emulators can be awful, which
| is a contrast to the "It Just Works" way of doing things
| with IOS. This doesn't jive with the image they sell, or
| that they wish to support.
|
| 2. By letting anyone run real software easily on an iPad,
| this cuts into their sales of MacBooks. This is obviously
| not in their interest, since they'd rather sell two
| machines instead of one machine.
| jandrese wrote:
| For point 1 I'm not sure how may people are going to fire
| up Window on an emulator, find it doesn't handle touch
| events very well, and go "iPads suck". However, there are
| a number of people who have gone "I'd like to do X on the
| iPad but there's no good way to do it, iPads suck",
| especially in the developer realm.
|
| This is especially true on the "Pro" version of the iPad,
| where the OS feels like a major constraint on what would
| otherwise be a very capable device.
| derefr wrote:
| > find it doesn't handle touch events very well
|
| You don't need to touch your Windows VM. The iPad Magic
| Keyboard cases have trackpads on them; and iPads also
| support Bluetooth mice.
|
| (And a user of iPadOS VM software probably wouldn't even
| be trying to touch the screen to interact with the
| software anyway. After all, why boot up such software if
| not for productivity? And who would attempt productivity
| _on an iPad_ without putting it into its "productivity
| orientation", with the iPad docked onto a keyboard case?)
| FLT8 wrote:
| I would have also thought:
|
| 3. It lets users get software on to the ipad without
| going through the App Store (thereby escaping apples
| ability to clip the ticket on the way through).
| kmeisthax wrote:
| You forgot #3: By letting anyone run mouse software on
| iPad, they have to use a stylus to operate it, which made
| Steve Jobs mad at Microsoft's pen computing division back
| in 2001.
|
| I honestly believe this to be way more important of a
| reason to Apple than anything else. The point of making
| you buy two computers is not to get twice as much money
| out of you, it's to get app developers to port their apps
| over to UIKit and make you re-buy all your apps twice.
|
| I tried UTM SE a while back. Using it with the Magic
| Keyboard was _almost_ the Real Deal Laptop Experience,
| but if I ever took my iPad out of its Magic Keyboard then
| I 'd have to use some really annoying mouse and keyboard
| emulation to use the same software. Apple's the kind of
| company that will absolutely put guns to the heads of
| their users to force them to not have a bad computing
| experience.
| rrgok wrote:
| You can already achieve the same workflow with Shadow PC,
| even though you need a permanent low latency network
| connection.
| derefr wrote:
| Sure, you _can_... but you never _would_.
|
| The whole point of an adult owning an iPad as a separate
| second device (besides using it as a drawing tablet or as
| a touch-control surface for professional production apps)
| is that it's a lightweight and more "rugged" portable
| computer than a laptop is, focused on enabling
| consumption and light computing tasks in situations where
| you either would _worry_ about bringing a laptop, or just
| wouldn 't _care to deal with_ bringing a laptop.
|
| The _comparative advantage_ of an iPad over a laptop is
| found by just throwing it in your bag when you 're going
| "out" and not _planning_ to do work, and then pulling it
| out: in a coffee shop; at a park; on a beach; on a bus
| /train/plane; etc. Into, in other words, exactly the
| sorts of situations where you _don 't_ have a "permanent
| low latency network connection."
|
| Any environment where _relying_ on a remote desktop would
| make sense, is also an environment where the iPad _has_
| no comparative advantage. If you 're in such an
| environment constantly, you'd just buy a laptop and never
| even consider an iPad!
| kmeisthax wrote:
| iSH is already on the App Store and lets you run x86 Linux
| apps.
|
| My guess is that the thing Apple is actually objecting to
| is graphical user output, specifically mouse software being
| utilized on a touchscreen. UTM (and iDOS) does that, iSH
| only gives you a terminal. Terminal software _is_ touch-
| friendly, so it 's allowed, even though iSH has to do the
| same threaded code dance UTM SE does.
|
| (And of course there's also a-Shell which runs WASM/WASI
| binaries in Safari...)
| derefr wrote:
| My understanding was that iSH is the same kind of thing
| that e.g. Swift Playground for iPadOS is: both ship with
| an internal userland of binaries, including a compiler
| toolchain, embedded into the app (that Apple can audit);
| and both allow code to be compiled and executed locally.
| But in neither case can you download and install
| arbitrary non-Apple-audited third-party packages into the
| sandbox.
|
| This is why iSH calls itself a "Linux-like environment."
| There's no package manager! If Apple allowed it, iSH
| would almost certainly just be a wrapped-up Debian VM.
| But it's not. (And this is why iSH has always been
| considered a toy by people wanting to do real software
| development, rather than being something anyone would
| recommend you use as part of your workflow.)
| timenova wrote:
| iSH does allow you to download packages from the Alpine
| package repo, but they maintain their own mirror. The
| only issue is that they haven't updated it in a while, so
| its stuck at Alpine 3.14, and there's no (at least
| straightforward) option to upgrade to the later versions
| or to Alpine edge. I haven't yet tried updating the
| /etc/apk/ files to make Alpine upgrade though.
| derefr wrote:
| This isn't real "arbitrary package downloading", though
| -- Apple still audits all the code that goes into these
| repos (which is _why_ they can 't just keep them up-to-
| date.) It's essentially just offloading of some of the
| app's packaged code into separate "DLC" modules, to make
| the base app download more lightweight.
|
| > I haven't yet tried updating the /etc/apk/ files to
| make Alpine upgrade though.
|
| I would highly suspect that this wouldn't work.
|
| Maybe it would have in some prior version, back when
| there was the technical barrier of it being very hard to
| cross-compile Linux binaries for arm64.
|
| But I would guess, upon the popularization of things like
| the Raspberry Pi, that Apple required the developer of
| iSH to modify the version of apk(1) that ships with the
| tool to only work with APKs that have been signed by
| Apple.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| iSH has nothing stopping you, the user, from wgetting
| arbitrary scripts or binaries and running them in the
| VM[0]. It also exposes a file provider so you can drop
| arbitrary x86 binaries into it if you so choose.
|
| Also, iSH does have a package manager. It used to
| actually be modified to pull packages from the App Store
| but now they use a separate server. I don't remember if
| it's the Alpine Linux package repo or a custom thing for
| iSH.
|
| [0] In fact, this was the excuse Apple used to ban it a
| few years ago
| derefr wrote:
| > iSH has nothing stopping you, the user, from wgetting
| arbitrary scripts or binaries and running them in the
| VM[0]
|
| "Nothing stopping you" in the same sense that there's
| nothing stopping someone from using a sequence of
| specific gamepad button-presses to turn Super Mario World
| into Flappy Bird.
|
| In vulnerability-exploitation terms, sure, the attack
| surface is there.
|
| But in "would anyone actually spend time doing this"
| terms: no. The advantages don't outweigh the labor costs.
| (Especially if you're doing this _for work_ , _in anger_
| , and you want to install an app to let you solve a
| problem _right now_ by popping open a Linux terminal, and
| installing all the packages you need -- including some
| arbitrary non-packaged SDKs that depend on dev-
| dependencies from specific known Linux flavors.)
|
| Mind you, _in theory_ , someone _could_ make it easier
| for everyone else to do this, by writing a bootstrap
| script that wgets a bunch of stuff and effectively turns
| your iSH environment into e.g. Debian. But nobody has
| done this.
|
| Why? I can't say for sure, but I _suspect_ it 's
| precisely because the iSH "sandbox" _isn 't_ actually a
| VM containing a Linux kernel, but rather an older
| technique -- I think involving a userland of binaries
| compiled to use Darwin libraries; or maybe more likely, a
| userland linked to some Linux-on-XNU virtualization layer
| (custom libc, libresolv, etc.) And that's just not a
| "flavor" of Linux that you can find Debian packages for,
| or even third-party APKs for. Even if you built up your
| own apt base-packages repo to allow debootstrap to work,
| that wouldn't magically enable you to then find install
| deb packages from arbitrary apt repos that weren't
| compiled for the iSH "arch".
|
| And I think that iSH continuing to exist on iPadOS, but
| persisting in doing this complex kind of virtualization
| rather than switching over to being "just VM software
| hard-coded to use a specific Linux VM", is perhaps on
| purpose. I'm guessing that Apple _wouldn 't_ allow "just
| a Linux VM" on the App Store any more than they allow UTM
| -- again, precisely because it would unlock the
| capability to efficiently utilize arbitrary third-party
| packages, and thereby to actually use the iPad "in anger"
| for software-development business productivity. It would
| be "enough" of a development environment that some
| _businesses_ might consider buying their employees iPads
| instead of Macs. And Apple _really_ wants to avoid that.
|
| > Also, iSH does have a package manager. It used to
| actually be modified to pull packages from the App Store
| but now they use a separate server. I don't remember if
| it's the Alpine Linux package repo or a custom thing for
| iSH.
|
| It's a semi-custom thing for iSH, in that it's a custom
| "arch", with all the packages containing binaries
| compiled for the iSH virtualization layer. So you can't
| switch over/add on any third party repo; binaries from
| ordinary arm64 APKs wouldn't run. Third parties would
| need to create an iSH-arch release of their package
| specifically. And AFAIK there's no published
| infrastructure to enable third parties to do that.
|
| In essence, though, the packages in this repo are still a
| "part of" the app. Despite being hosted on a third-party
| server, those packages still have to be signed -- and I
| have a strong feeling that Apple, not the iSH dev, holds
| those signing keys. So Apple, not the iSH dev, gets final
| say over what APKs end up available in the iSH userland.
| (And that's why those APKs haven't been updated in a
| while -- the iSH dev likely has to go back-and-forth with
| Apple when pushing out updates to their own repo -- just
| as if they were publishing a new version of the app.)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| If you're curious, iSH's source is public:
| https://github.com/ish-app/ish
|
| You're correct that there is no Linux kernel emulation.
| They went with reimplementation for that. However, the
| userland is very much emulated x86 binaries. You can even
| compile your own C code inside iSH and run it. When you
| syscall, control passes from the threaded code[0]
| interpreter into the Linux reimplementation.
|
| The reason why they aren't shipping Debian is that the
| threaded code technique being used as a JIT substitute in
| both iSH and UTM SE is far too slow to run a full Debian
| derivative. Believe me, I tried installing Ubuntu on UTM
| SE and it took literal hours and flattened my iPad
| battery in the process. iSH uses Alpine Linux because
| it's very lightweight[1].
|
| As far as I'm aware there's no secret deal with Apple to
| lock iSH down. The only limitations I've ran into have to
| do with MySQL, which wants unaligned atomics, which you
| can't do on ARM64 without compromising the performance of
| the emulator. I actually had a discussion with the
| developer of iSH about this and put in a PR to make MySQL
| stop crashing iSH.
|
| [0] return-oriented programming
|
| [1] So lightweight it doesn't even ship anything GNU,
| making it one of the few genuine "Linux distros" with no
| slash or plus or "I would just like to interject"
| kccqzy wrote:
| False. I've been using iSH before it became available on
| the App Store. Downloading and executing arbitrary
| binaries is always possible. Just go install iSH and run
| any command-line binary to see for yourself.
|
| The reason it's considered a toy is because of the sheer
| number of bugs in its Linux syscall simulation layer as
| well as in its implementation of Forth-style threaded
| code, not because of a package manager. After all its
| GitHub page says "This code is known to the State of
| California to cause cancer, birth defects, and
| reproductive harm."
| lxgr wrote:
| Based on the horror stories I've heard about App Store
| reviews, this might literally just be a part of their review
| org that's not up to date on third-party EU app stores
| applying the wrong set of rules (or for that matter, any type
| of rules at all).
|
| Doesn't make it any better, of course.
| gorkish wrote:
| I remember the flash-in-the-pan moment where through some strange
| conflux of exploits and firmware features UTM on iOS was able to
| access full hardware virtualization support. It was a glorious
| glimpse into an alternate reality that we will likely never get
| to see again.
|
| I don't have enough superlatives to express my disappointment
| when seeing all of that effort suppressed and restricted by
| Apple.
|
| When the UTM authors say "it's not worth it" -- they may be onto
| something. Apple is slowly but surely beginning to be "not worth
| it" for me and for many other professional users. Happy WWDC
| everybody; enjoy getting fucked.
| ShellfishMeme wrote:
| I was naively hoping that with the M4 iPad the opposite of this
| would happen and they would let us unlock the power of this
| device so I could use it as my dev machine when I'm traveling.
|
| Instead, no real improvements are coming to iPad OS and if
| you're not gaming or video editing, all you get to do is
| marveling at how powerful your YouTube player is in benchmarks.
|
| Please Apple, let the Pro device finally be a Pro device and
| let us use virtualization.
| gorkish wrote:
| The fact that the new $3k+ M4 iPad Pro cannot run regular OS
| X in some kind of VM or something is flat-out insulting.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| surely it's coming. you don't keep maxing that thing out
| otherwise
| nathanasmith wrote:
| The bright side is over the last couple of years I've been
| broken of my lust for every new device that comes out promising
| "newer and shinier." The reality is it's the same old locked
| down slab just a little faster with added bing bings and
| wahoos. So now I just save most of the cash and spend the rest
| on upgrading my PC.
| m463 wrote:
| > the same old locked down slab
|
| with more locks.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Apples not been worth it for pro users for a good decade. The
| only thing it's been good for is a litmus test of users care
| for ethics in computing.
|
| The whole iPad will eat MacBook business so let's cuck its
| capabilities is insanely wasteful. Like should be illegal
| levels of wasteful given the current climate of consumption and
| climate change problems facing us.
|
| Apple and their whole culture of product rollout and
| consumption is a massive part of our wasteful problem as a
| global society. Terrible company really.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Apple should be allowed to block whatever they want from their
| app store. And users should be allowed to run whatever software
| they wish on their devices not installed through Apple's store.
| jb1991 wrote:
| It really is a simple as this. People often make it more
| complicated than this fundamental issue.
| postalrat wrote:
| Show apple be able to block apps from third party stories like
| in the article?
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Apple should allowed to block apps from third party app
| stores on devices they paid for.
| hulitu wrote:
| Apple does not pay for devices. They sell them. The users
| pay.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Yes. The users pay for them, the users own them, the
| users are entitled to run whatever software they wish on
| devices they paid for, own, and control.
| croon wrote:
| You stated the opposite above, which is what GP argued
| against.
| Jowsey wrote:
| I assume there's just a "not be" missing somewhere
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| I believe I was consistent. Perhaps you believe that
| because apple had once paid for the devices that they
| should still be able to exercise control of them post
| sale to a user. This is a violation of ownership and of
| the first sale doctrine.
| wiseowise wrote:
| It was a joke that Apple can control software on devices
| that they (Apple) paid for. Since it's they user that
| pays money - they should be in charge of the software.
| gridder wrote:
| Not if the device is a 'managed' Apple's employee's
| whimsicalism wrote:
| confusing way of stating your view imo, as the other thread
| shows
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I think you mean: Apple the company should be able to block
| stuff on devices Apple the company paid for (for their
| internal employees). Not all of the ones Apple
| manufactured.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| To be succinct, ownership implies control. This is a very
| old legal principle.
| immibis wrote:
| Only if Apple's app store doesn't have any special placement.
| Remember when the EU wouldn't let phone have default browsers?
| The first time you started the phone, it had to show you 5
| browsers in a randomized order and you picked one.
| pmontra wrote:
| Those were Windows PCs, not phones.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| It should not require you to even install one of five; if you
| do not want to install a browser at all (or if you wish to
| install one other than those five, possibly some time in
| future) then it should not be required.
|
| Although, I think it would be better to just not install any
| browser by default and not even ask; you can install it
| yourself later if you wish to do so, and can install any one
| you want (or more than one, if you wish) instead of having to
| pick one from the provided list.
| cobbal wrote:
| I'll go a step further and say that users should be able to
| distribute software without needing to get apple's approval.
| Instead we get the lie of "_ is damaged and can't be opened.
| You should move it to the Trash."
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Is a person* able to sell something while restricting how it
| can be used? This is before we even get into the issues of
| selling software vs. selling the right to use a copy of the
| software. Things like copyright laws, IP laws, and even
| ownership ends up getting complicated when deciding what is
| just or not. I think we mostly agree you shouldn't be able to
| resell copies of a book if you buy a book, but selling your own
| specific copy of a book is fine. But why does this distinction
| exist? Do you really own the book if you can't resell copies of
| it?
|
| *or company. Perhaps part of the answer is that sometimes we
| say yes for people but no for companies.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| >Is a person* able to sell something while restricting how it
| can be used?
|
| Of course, this is the domain of contract law. Often car
| companies restrict how soon a desirable model can be resold
| and for how much.
|
| edit: And robust anti trust enforcement keeps contract terms
| reasonable. Contracts are limited by unconscionability and
| superseded by legislation but otherwise fair game.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I think that copyright (and patents) is no good, and should
| be abolished. They should not restrict making copies of
| books, selling copies, and other stuff, by copyright. What
| you should not be allowed to do is to make an inexact copy
| and then sell it and then claim that the inexact copy is the
| same as the original, if it is not the same as the original;
| however, it can still be allowed if you do not make such
| invalid claims.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Yes, I agree, with both.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| UTM is open source, so you can build it yourself for your own iOS
| device, if you really want to.
| rcarmo wrote:
| But you have to keep re-signing it every week or so, which is a
| major pain
| adamomada wrote:
| Check out https://sideloadly.io to ease that pain
| rcarmo wrote:
| The loopholes it uses won't work for long, and it's not
| practical when traveling. Besides, this is an Apple-created
| problem that they could easily fix by allowing people to
| deploy apps to their own devices without any stupid limits.
| oflebbe wrote:
| But you may not have access to API capabilities needed without
| an paid account.
| xutopia wrote:
| That's not the same as being available as an easily installable
| executable and such a drawback for most people.
| JDW1023 wrote:
| Doesn't building an iOS app requires an Mac?
| holoduke wrote:
| There should be very strict counter penalties for false claims in
| my opinion. I once received a dmca from a much larger (foreign)
| company than us. Result was complete loss of revenue for one
| month. We survived, but it felt like a mafia action. Unfair and
| powerless.
| immibis wrote:
| Isn't it your responsibility to sue them for that?
| kevingadd wrote:
| Suing a foreign company is something like 5-25x more
| expensive and less likely to be successful. It's a huge
| defect in the DMCA that they can do this - every lawyer I
| talked to for a similar problem told me not to bother.
| withinboredom wrote:
| It's almost crazy that someone hasn't come up with an
| insurance company for false DCMA claims. They'd probably be
| rolling in cash and it would put some serious pressure on
| people throwing their weight around.
| kevingadd wrote:
| I'm not sure the economics would work out. It seems like
| it would be tough to get the bad actors to pay out in
| court beyond getting your legal fees back. In many cases
| they're basically just little scam corporations without
| many real assets that exist to cause trouble on behalf of
| the real bad actors.
| withinboredom wrote:
| That's not how insurance companies work. Basically, the
| amount of YouTubers out there paying a monthly fee to
|
| 1. continue getting income while a dispute is ongoing,
|
| 2. potential payout if it goes to court/settled.
|
| Basically, the insurance company would probably very
| rarely go to court; they'd only do it if they knew they
| would win hands-down. Otherwise, they would probably just
| send threatening letters (which lawyers are good at) and
| take a token sum (if anything).
|
| In reality, getting a false DCMA takedown is pretty rare
| (if the amount of YouTube content is anything to go by).
|
| And lets not mention all the free publicity you'd get
| when a YouTuber does get one, because they all
| apparently, rant and rave about how they got their video
| taken down when it is taken down.
| holoduke wrote:
| The investigation phase alone would have costed me arround
| 50,100k minimum. Serious money for a small business.
| mfuzzey wrote:
| This is the reason I will never use the Apple ecosystem, even if
| the hardware is pretty good.
|
| A hardware manufacturer has no business telling me what I may or
| may not run on hardware I have purchased, period.
| solarkraft wrote:
| It's so nice of them to act so openly maliciously so that not
| even the most naive person can believe they should have a say in
| which apps get published in third party stores.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| It's really weird seeing Apple say "sure, we allowed a console
| emulator, but PC emulation is still banned". If anything I
| expected them to allow the latter _before_ the former.
|
| On the other hand, the reason why UTM got banned is completely
| obvious: it lets users operate desktop software with a finger.
| That's the same reason why iDOS 2 got banned[0], and if iSH
| shipped with a graphical output they wouldn't have unbanned that
| either. The whole reason why the iPad exists at all as a separate
| product line with a separate UI toolkit from Macs is purely
| because Apple - specifically, Steve Jobs - said so.
|
| Apple's entire foray into multitouch was borne out of Steve Jobs
| wanting to spite a 'friend'[1] at the pen computing division of
| Microsoft. It can be summed up with the phrase "who wants a
| stylus"?[2] That's why they continue to saddle the iPad with
| inferior, buggier phone software, _because they think it 's
| literally the only way a tablet can be made_. So literally
| anything that might let someone turn an iPhone or an iPad into a
| Windows tablet is considered the worst kind of heresy in the
| Apple religion.
|
| Anyway, I hope the EU smacks Apple down on this, because Apple
| very clearly promised that EU DMA compliant Notarization would
| only filter for technical compatibility, not taste.
|
| [0] Yes, Apple said a bunch of stuff about how it "allows content
| without licensing", but we saw with Delta how easily that concern
| crumbles away.
|
| [1] I do not believe Jobs could have friends in the way we
| understand the word.
|
| [2] The Apple Pencil doesn't count. A "stylus" is a physical tool
| intended to work around software not being designed for touch.
| humzashahid98 wrote:
| Is the "no JIT' policy somehow baked into the hardware/software
| of iOS devices, instead of something Apple finds by doing an app
| review?
|
| I thought it was the latter (that running a JIT on iOS would be
| possible but not accepted on the app store), but then I'm left
| wondering why they seem to have submitted a JIT-less version on a
| third party app store.
|
| Maybe the intent was ease development by having only one version
| to support for the first-party and also third-party app stores.
| grishka wrote:
| IIRC it's part of the sandbox apps run in, which, in turn,
| makes use of the hardware memory protection. To do JIT, you
| need to first write your dynamically generated code into the
| memory, and then execute it. The memory you obtain via e.g.
| malloc() doesn't allow execution, only reading and writing
| (this is controlled by permission flags, in the page table, on
| the memory pages your app is given by the kernel). To obtain
| memory that is both writable and executable, you call mmap()
| specifying corresponding flags. The kernel just refuses to
| allocate such memory for your app because it doesn't have
| necessary permissions, or "entitlements" in Apple speak.
| humzashahid98 wrote:
| Thank you for the insightful answer! That's nice to know. I
| hadn't considered that they had a system like that in place.
| andrekandre wrote:
| doesn't it seem a bit strange that apple would allow emulation of
| game consoles which (for the most part) are used with pirated
| games but a pc emulator that is more easily can use legitimate
| copies is blocked for 'reasons'... its almost like apple is
| encouraging piracy...
|
| btw, i think the top comment on that article nails it:
| > This is clearly Apple just blocking anything that could allow
| the iPad to be used as a real computer
| pquki4 wrote:
| Personally I care about this much more than whatever AI stuff
| happens at WWDC.
|
| This is the real "developer" issue we are talking about.
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