[HN Gopher] Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones
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Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones
Author : griffinli
Score : 986 points
Date : 2025-03-18 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ericmigi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ericmigi.com)
| bearjaws wrote:
| It's honestly amazing how Apple managed to dodge anti-trust in
| the United States.
|
| The fact you cannot build a competing watch is unacceptable and
| the idea that "well go build one for Android" is refusing to
| acknowledge that Apple is its own market in and of itself.
|
| Throw in the fact that even getting an app that isn't a game into
| the App store is not trivial, especially if it dares include some
| form of payment processing outside of the Apple-verse.
|
| The Floatplane Saga, where Linus Tech Tips didn't want to use
| Apple payment processor because they would have to charge 30%
| more is another example. It took months and dozens of app
| resubmissions, only to have to use their massive YouTuber
| influence to get into contact with someone at Apple should be
| proof enough that the App Store has gone too far.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I think you're overlooking Garmin who has a healthy business in
| smart watches and they're compatible with Apple devices.
|
| Edit : more up to date and useful comments thankfully below
| james_pm wrote:
| Long time Garmin watch user here and Garmins are also
| HORRIBLY crippled on iOS. Can I respond to a text message?
| No. I can clear the notification, but that is it. Apple Watch
| has far greater abilities than any other smart watch. That is
| the issue.
| Zagitta wrote:
| As someone who has a garmin watch and switched from android
| to iOS I can tell you it's exactly as crippled as the article
| spells out. So if anything garmin has a healthy smartwatch
| business in spite of apple trying their hardest to choke
| competition.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| The limitations in the blog post apply for Garmin just as
| much as Pebble.
| kelnos wrote:
| My wife (iPhone user) has a Garmin watch that a friend of
| ours (Android user) recommended. The friend's experience is
| much much better, with many more features that work. Apple is
| definitely intentionally crippling the third-party smartwatch
| experience.
| roamerz wrote:
| With as much functionality as there is on an Apple Watch I can
| see how that would be huge endeavor to accomplish while
| maintaining the tight security and privacy model.
| eddieroger wrote:
| I think the devil is in the details of how iOS and watchOS
| interact. Instead of sending and receiving texts from iOS,
| watchOS is running messages and only sharing data. I imagine
| this pattern works a large amount of the time in Apple's
| benefit. They make a notification API available for anyone to
| use, they just choose not to do it. They also make it so the
| watch can use the phone's data, and this they do use, but
| also it can use WiFi or Cellular on its own.
| roamerz wrote:
| 100% agree with those statements. It would be nice to have
| a more robust API and this more options but unless forced
| to I don't see Apple doing that and honestly rightly so.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| > It's honestly amazing how Apple managed to dodge anti-trust
| in the United States.
|
| What's amazing to me is how much things have changed since the
| Microsoft antitrust saga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_
| States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
| Jtsummers wrote:
| MS had a much larger market share than Apple does in any
| product category. They were something like 95% or more of the
| PC OS market. Apple has, in the US, around 50% of the
| smartphone market and around 15% of the PC market.
|
| MS also did a _lot_ to curtail competition that Apple hasn 't
| even come close to. Like how they crippled BeOS by
| threatening OEMs with higher Windows licensing costs (as a
| low-margin business this would have pushed any OEM prices too
| high to remain competitive).
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| Obviously this is going to be up for debate, but in your
| comment you acknowledge that "go build one for Android" is an
| option. This is an indication that your complaint is not in
| Apple's behavior, but your regret that the competition sucks
| and it's not Apple's fault. Apple is not a market on their own
| from the perspective of smart phones and watches, every person
| making a purchasing decision has options (This is different
| from an app developer's perspective. See the last line for the
| explanation of why that's different).
|
| It's not like Apple started off letting third party watches
| work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you could
| argue from the article that they started off with minor
| handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the
| years). Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only
| certain watch options work. It's not like anyone is suing Ford
| or Dodge for only making accessories that work on their own
| cars and trucks. It's not like anyone can legitimately complain
| that Ford is anticompetitive because they aren't making
| themselves compatible with Dodge oil filters.
|
| If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android options
| from being good, then you probably have a winnable legal case.
| But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android
| players are losing on their own merits.
|
| Apple is its own market from the perspective of app developers.
| The app developers can only get to iPhone users through the
| Apple App Store, so restricting access and charging high fees
| is anti-trust.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's not like anyone is suing Ford or Dodge for only making
| accessories that work on their own cars and trucks. It's not
| like anyone can legitimately complain that Ford is
| anticompetitive because they aren't making themselves
| compatible with Dodge oil filters.
|
| You're conflating two different things here.
|
| One is, are their oil filters _compatible_? That isn 't a
| problem; they can be incompatible. They're often incompatible
| even with other vehicles from the same manufacturer. Larger
| engines need larger oil filters etc.
|
| The other is, does the company _prohibit_ compatibility? If a
| new company wants to make engines but not oil filters, so
| they make a car engine compatible with existing Ford oil
| filters, or someone wants to make oil filters for Fords even
| though they 're not Ford, does Ford do anything to inhibit
| this? In general they do not, and if they did, that very much
| should be an antitrust violation.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| No I'm not conflating things- Ford and Dodge filter
| incompatibility is almost directly comparable to a software
| company making API changes to be incompatible or to choose
| not to offer something they could easily include. And it's
| not just Ford and Dodge; practically every car maker
| chooses to make some parts that are proprietary. Oil
| filters are a particular easy one to compare to software
| practices.
|
| Ford and Dodge have ranges of similar size engines with
| similar flow rates in their cars and trucks (treat Ram as
| if it were Dodge). They both specify the use of filters
| that follow industry standards like SAE/USCAR-36 and ISO
| 4548-12. The ONLY reason that you can't swap Ford/Dodge
| filters between engines with similar filtration
| requirements is because each company uses a different
| thread size and filter interface dimensions. Any company
| could adopt a common standard and simplify the choices at
| the auto parts store but none of them do, because they all
| want to exercise some amount of control. The funny part is,
| they all participate in creating industry standards and
| they make very little money off the sale of filters. They
| also make their specifications available to aftermarket
| filter manufacturers like Wix and Fram. There is no patent
| protection on a particular thread size or the diameter of a
| rubber gasket. There is NOTHING stopping Ford and Dodge
| from unifying the filtration interfaces in their similar
| sized V-8 truck engines. Why is this part brand specific?
| You can buy a range of tires that work with either brand as
| long as you get the right size and durability ratings. You
| can buy batteries that work with either brand. You can find
| a whole slew of parts that are standard and interchangeable
| across brands, but some parts aren't.
|
| This is equivalent to saying, "these two watches both have
| Bluetooth, a microprocessor, and touch screen, the only
| reason one watch works with Apple and the other works with
| Google is because of the software." Apple could open up
| their software to allow both watches to work with iPhone.
| But they don't do it. Apple does allow Bluetooth headphones
| to work fine with iPhones even though they offer the Apple
| AirPods. So even in the phone market you have analogs to
| "certain parts can work interchangeably across brands, but
| these don't." In the automotive world nobody is complaining
| about anti-trust, so maybe we need to think about whether
| Apple's actions regarding their watches is actually anti-
| trust.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The ONLY reason that you can't swap Ford/Dodge filters
| between engines with similar filtration requirements is
| because each company uses a different thread size and
| filter interface dimensions.
|
| Which is maybe dumb, but it isn't a _problem_ , because
| of this:
|
| > They also make their specifications available to
| aftermarket filter manufacturers like Wix and Fram.
|
| Which is the thing Apple _isn 't_ doing, and furthermore
| is doing the opposite and preventing full compatibility
| with third party watches even if they would reverse
| engineer the protocol used between the Apple Watch and
| iPhones. Which is what makes it an antitrust problem in
| that case but not the other.
|
| Moreover, the argument you're making is that the
| automakers purposely cause their filters to be
| incompatible to limit competition. You're essentially
| arguing that it _should_ be an antitrust violation in
| that case. Which is a weaker claim because competition in
| that space isn 't being as clearly inhibited -- nobody is
| claiming that the incompatibility is impacting the
| quality of third party oil filters -- but if you made the
| case that it was then you would be condemning Ford rather
| than vindicating Apple.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| > preventing full compatibility with third party watches
|
| What law in any country requires this? Apple is not a
| public utility and people don't have rights to access.
|
| > the argument you're making is that the automakers
| purposely cause their filters to be incompatible to limit
| competition
|
| No I'm not making that argument. I am arguing that
| incompatibility is there, could be resolved if the
| companies chose to. The incompatibility persists and is
| not illegal. It has nothing to do with anticompetitive
| behavior. Apple being incompatible with third party
| watches should be the same- the incompatibility could be
| changed, but it is not illegal. Just because some people
| wish things were different doesn't make it illegal or
| immoral.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| > Apple is not a market on their own from the perspective of
| smart phones and watches.
|
| Apple actually acts as a gatekeeper to the smart watch market
| when used with their devices, because they provide core
| platform services as a gateway for these products to operate
| and communicate with end-users, but define rules and
| restrictions which don't apply for Apple smart watches
| themselves.
|
| > Apple is its own market from the perspective of app
| developers.
|
| Exactly. They create a market while giving themselves
| preferential treatment. They do the same with smart watches,
| therefore not ensuring a level playing field in that market.
|
| > If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android
| options from being good, then you probably have a winnable
| legal case.
|
| But isn't that's the case Pebble is making here?
|
| There is actually a Wear OS iOS App from Google to connect
| Android Wear devices with iPhones, and beside the fact that
| it's not possible to connect any non-Apple Watch to the
| iPhone without manually installing a separate App, Google is
| not able to provide the same functionality as Apple Watch
| does even when incorporating such a companion app.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| > But isn't that's the case Pebble is making here?
|
| No, the case they are making is that Apple is making things
| worse for Apple users. They haven't done anything to effect
| the Android watch experience.
|
| > They create a market
|
| They didn't create a market in this case. They created a
| product, which is the Apple Watch.
|
| > Apple actually acts as a gatekeeper to the smart watch
| market when used with their devices
|
| Wrong- they act as a gatekeeper to developers, not to
| users. If the new Pebble's core product was their app, then
| all of this would indeed be anticompetitive behavior (see
| recent European court cases against Apple). But Pebble's
| product is their watch, and there is nothing saying that
| Pebble has the right to integrate into another company's
| product. Apple could choose to do this, but they don't, and
| that's okay. Consumers can consider these facts when they
| are buying a phone.
| tavavex wrote:
| > They didn't create a market in this case. They created
| a product, which is the Apple Watch.
|
| I think this is the biggest disagreement point between
| you and the other poster. Whether it constitutes a new
| market is up for debate, but one can definitely argue
| that hardware and software that interfaces with iOS
| devices can be considered a market in and of itself,
| considering that there are literal billions of iOS
| devices worldwide.
|
| It would be one thing if iOS was a limited-scope,
| standalone product. But it's not - a large portion of its
| value comes from working in conjunction with other, non-
| Apple software (and to a certain extent, hardware).
|
| Now, in this segment, it's undeniable that Apple has
| constructed a web of their own solutions over iOS, and
| consistently gives themselves preferential treatment to
| ensure that other products have limited, if any,
| functionality.
|
| This is certainly legal right now, at least in the US.
| But I don't think it's right or that it serves the
| consumers' interests. It's very similar to manufacturers
| of all sorts of physical devices freaking out about
| third-party repairs, parts, modifications and so on. It
| even has all the same marketing points about how anything
| without the explicit megacorp blessing is automatically
| tainted and unsafe, regardless of what it is.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| > But isn't that's the case Pebble is making here?
|
| >> No, the case they are making is that Apple is making
| things worse for Apple users. They haven't done anything
| to effect the Android watch experience.
|
| What? Pebble is making the case that Apple is making
| things worse for Pebble users on iOS devices than for
| Apple users on iOS devices. That's the case. Android Wear
| is in the same boat as Pebble here.
|
| > They create a market
|
| >> They didn't create a market in this case. They created
| a product, which is the Apple Watch.
|
| They created a product to sell in the market they already
| created, because an iOS user is free to buy any competing
| watch he wants, but Apple sets the rules for those
| competitors while setting other rules for itself.
|
| > Apple actually acts as a gatekeeper to the smart watch
| market when used with their devices
|
| >> Wrong- they act as a gatekeeper to developers, not to
| users.
|
| What's wrong? What users? Thanks for confirming what I
| wrote. You agree that Apple acts as a gatekeeper to
| developers, which means that they control access to the
| market these developers are trying to reach.
|
| > If the new Pebble's core product was their app, then
| all of this would indeed be anticompetitive behavior
|
| For a Smart watch, Apple requires that the core product
| of competitors must involve an App, and Apple is the
| gatekeeper for that App and thus also the gatekeeper of
| the competing watch-product.
|
| Their own product requires no dedicated App and can offer
| features of iOS not accessible to competitors
| kelnos wrote:
| > _This is an indication that your complaint is not in Apple
| 's behavior, but your regret that the competition sucks and
| it's not Apple's fault._
|
| No it's not; GP didn't even address this. Competition sucks,
| and that _is_ Apple 's (and Google's) fault.
|
| > _Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only
| certain watch options work._
|
| I'm sure that's not true. Most people choose to buy an iPhone
| because it's an iPhone. No one is going to buy an iPhone
| because Apple Watch works and Garmin watches don't work (as
| well).
|
| Certainly some people buy an iPhone because they also want to
| buy an Apple Watch (which I assume doesn't really work well
| or at all with Android), but I think that's a minority of
| purchasers. They by an iPhone because of the iPhone itself.
|
| > _It 's not like Apple started off letting third party
| watches work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you
| could argue from the article that they started off with minor
| handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the
| years)._
|
| I feel like your parenthetical refutes any point you were
| trying to make in the prior sentence. The first part of your
| sentence is irrelevant. While it does take work to
| standardize public APIs, it also takes work to lock things
| down and choose what subset of functions third parties are
| allowed to access. The fact of crippling third-party
| smartwatch access is anti-competitive behavior.
|
| This is the same shit we went through in the 90s with
| Microsoft, but many people here are too young to remember
| what that was like. MS gave their own apps (Office, IE, etc.)
| access to private, undocumented Windows APIs that let them
| provide a better experience than similar third-party apps
| could provide. The US government and courts decided that was
| illegal. It should be illegal for Apple to do so as well.
| (And before you start quoting relative market share numbers
| between MS in the 90s and Apple now, I don't think that's
| relevant. You shouldn't need a monopoly in order to be
| restricted from anti-competitive behavior.)
|
| > _But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android
| players are losing on their own merits._
|
| That's a naive explanation for complex social phenomena.
| Android doesn't suck. It's fine. Very good even. But it's not
| enough to be good, or even excellent in today's markets. You
| need incumbency, lock-in, social capital, and, yes... anti-
| competitive behavior.
|
| And to be clear, Android manufacturers are _not_ losing. In
| most places outside the US, Android is the dominant operating
| system.
|
| But! This isn't about Android winning or losing. It's not
| about Android at all. It's about companies like Pebble and
| Garmin being hobbled in the iOS smartwatch market because of
| Apple's anti-competitive practices. Android is irrelevant to
| this.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| >GP didn't even address this
|
| Yes they did, when they said they were amazed that Apple
| dodged anti-trust lawsuits. I said that from the rest of
| their post it seemed like they acknowledged that
| competition existed, they just didn't want to use Android
| options. The legitimate anti-trust example they gave
| (LTT/Floatplane) is from an app developer perspective (not
| a smart phone and watch buyer), which is why I talked about
| that.
|
| > I'm sure that's not true. Most people choose to buy an
| iPhone because it's an iPhone. No one is going to buy an
| iPhone because Apple Watch works and Garmin watches don't
| work (as well).
|
| I didn't say that people buy iPhones _because_ other watch
| brands don 't work well, I said that they buy iPhones
| knowing that the other watch brands didn't work, and it
| still doesn't deter them. But they had the information
| available when they made their choice.
|
| > I feel like your parenthetical refutes any point you were
| trying to make in the prior sentence.
|
| No, I said it's not like they totally changed course from
| being welcoming to other brands to locking them out. They
| were always hostile to other smartwatch makers, but I
| acknowledged that the article mentions that they may have
| gotten more hostile in recent years. Acknowledging that
| their hostility may exist on a spectrum doesn't refute the
| point that they've always been hostile to other smartwatch
| brands. I love that in your next paragraph you include a
| parenthetical that could refute your own argument though-
| market share is absolutely relevant. Nobody is going to
| bother suing a small fry over anti-competitive behavior
| with 0.01% market share in a healthy competitive market-
| the market takes care of that issue on its own.
|
| > Android doesn't suck. It's fine. Very good even. ... It's
| not about Android at all
|
| This article is partly about Android since "Apple is being
| restrictive" is in comparison to features that the Android
| API offers. They are saying that they are going to make an
| Apple app for the Pebble but it is not going to be as good
| as the Android experience.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > your complaint is not in Apple's behavior, but your regret
| that the competition sucks and it's not Apple's fault
|
| Apple uses their dominant position in the smartphone market
| to exert leverage over the smartwatch market and block other
| companies' access to a huge chunk of potential smartwatch
| buyers. Reduced addressable market->reduced potential
| returns->reduced investment->worse products for everyone.
|
| This same pattern hurts Apple users as well because Apple can
| reduce their investment, increase prices, or both, without
| worrying about being beaten on quality or price.
|
| > Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain
| watch options work.
|
| This statement would be true if iPhone had 0.1% or 99.9%
| marketshare and is on its own irrelevant to whether or not it
| should be regulated. The whole point of regulating companies
| with dominant market positions is that they have tools to
| force customers into sub-optimal outcomes regardless of
| whether or not the customer recognizes it beforehand.
|
| > If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android
| options from being good, then you probably have a winnable
| legal case. But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other
| Android players are losing on their own merits.
|
| This ignores the dozens of Smartwatch companies that don't
| have a smartphone business to integrate with. In your view,
| what should Garmin have done if the major Android players
| blocked 3rd party feature parity from the beginning along
| with Apple? Would Garmin need to make their own smartphone
| and OS to compete for watch sales, or would their product
| just not exist? Would that be good or bad for the industry?
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| > Apple uses their dominant position in the smartphone
| market to exert leverage over the smartwatch market and
| block other companies' access to a huge chunk of potential
| smartwatch buyers.
|
| They also don't make the Apple Watch compatible with
| Android, so they are also giving up their own access to a
| huge chunk of potential buyers (70% of worldwide smartphone
| users are on Android). So maybe we're missing something.
|
| > In your view, what should Garmin have done if the major
| Android players blocked 3rd party feature parity from the
| beginning along with Apple?
|
| In your view, what would happen if only one smart phone
| manufacturer ever offered any watch integration API? Would
| that make all of the others (who don't offer an API) anti-
| competitive? Or would they just have a worse value
| proposition for their products?
|
| I can't believe this is the hill I'm going to die on- I'm
| not really an Apple fanboy, and I don't like some of the
| things they do (like 30% App Store fees or core technology
| fees in Europe). But I really don't see how Apple not
| opening up access to their phone constitutes anti-
| competitive practice. Companies are not obligated to
| deliver privileged access to their products. It's not a
| right you have to build a product off of someone else's
| product. The fact that they have opened up access in some
| categories does not make it anti-competitive that they
| didn't open up access in all categories. So many products
| are closed off in so many categories, why are we
| complaining about this time?
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > They also don't make the Apple Watch compatible with
| Android, so they are also giving up their own access to a
| huge chunk of potential buyers (70% of worldwide
| smartphone users are on Android). So maybe we're missing
| something.
|
| If smartwatches were an essential part of everyday life
| for the majority of people on the planet (or in <insert
| legal jurisdiction here>) as smartphones are then I would
| want regulation mandating interoperability there as well.
| As it is they are a relatively niche product so if Apple
| wants to limit the watch to their phones then I'm fine
| with that as I don't see it being a very powerful market
| distortion in the other direction.
|
| > In your view, what would happen if only one smart phone
| manufacturer ever offered any watch integration API?
| Would that make all of the others (who don't offer an
| API) anti-competitive?
|
| Only if those others have significant market penetration
| such that their closed API has the effect of harming
| consumer choice considerably in the smartwatch market.
|
| > Companies are not obligated to deliver privileged
| access to their products. It's not a right you have to
| build a product off of someone else's product.
|
| If you mean in principle, then IMO a sane legal system
| should absolutely confer some limited right to, for
| instance, build and sell software and hardware that runs
| on or interfaces with Windows. If you mean in practice,
| then it is absolutely a subject of debate in both the EU
| under DMA and the US under antitrust law:
|
| > Connected devices are a varied, large and commercially
| important group of products, including smartwatches,
| headphones and virtual reality headsets. Companies
| offering these products depend on effective
| interoperability with smartphones and their operating
| systems, such as iOS. The Commission intends to specify
| how Apple will provide effective interoperability with
| functionalities such as notifications, device pairing and
| connectivity.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_
| 24_...
|
| https://siliconangle.com/2024/03/20/doj-sues-apple-
| antitrust...
| hyperbovine wrote:
| I don't see how you can be a monopoly with <30% market share.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Apple has majority share in the US.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're conflating two different markets.
|
| Apple has less than 100% market share for _phones_. Apps and
| phone accessories are not phones, they 're separate products
| made by separate entities.
|
| If Apple phones and Android phones were compatible then the
| apps would be addressing the same market. For example, phones
| from Samsung and phones from Xiaomi both run the same apps,
| so they're in the same market. However, phones from Apple and
| phones from Samsung _do not_ run the same apps. They 're
| different markets. And Apple has a monopoly on the former.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| You don't see how you can be a monopoly with nearly 2/3
| market share and 2.5x market size of your next-largest
| competitor? You must not be very imaginative
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Some other companies with similar market share:
| - Coca Cola - DoorDash - Adobe - Tesla
| - Canon digital cameras
|
| I guess we should break all them up too.
| int_19h wrote:
| If they abuse their market dominance, we absolutely
| should.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > refusing to acknowledge that Apple is its own market in and
| of itself.
|
| Is the market iOS devices or smart phones?
|
| I think the definition of "market" is usually one of the most
| difficult questions to answer in anti-trust litigation.
| josefresco wrote:
| I have a very capable smartwatch and it's ridiculously bad how
| hobbled it is on iOS. I'm glad to see this article specifically
| highlight the issues, and how it's 100% Apple's intention to make
| non-Apple wearables on iOS terrible.
| cm2012 wrote:
| This is apple's modus operandi. Hobble competitors even if it's
| anti-customer. Fill the gap themselves for higher profits.
| diggan wrote:
| Don't forget the classic "Oh, that 3rd party app/feature is
| so popular, I bet we could build a identical/slightly less
| useful thing ourselves so people don't have to use other
| things than Apple software ever"
| neilv wrote:
| If necessary, you can even _retroactively_ ban the
| competitor 's app from the App Store that you control.
|
| As pretext, you can say the competitor's app is doing
| something now considered insecure or not privacy-
| respecting, or is not compliant with some new user
| experience or quality curation that you do.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Conveniently, Apple's App Store Review Guidelines also
| include several rules that restrict apps from duplicating
| features that the OS already provides.
|
| So if they detect a trend early enough, they implement it
| as first-party feature, dry out the existing competitors
| while restricting new competitors to enter based on the App
| Store Review...
| threeseed wrote:
| The guideline says:
|
| "Apps that copy basic iPhone or iPad functionality
| (including but not limited to its UI, gestures, core
| features) will be rejected unless the app provides a
| clearly different purpose or adds unique functionality."
|
| Note the "basic" line. And there are plenty of Photos,
| Notes, Streaming etc apps so not seeing where this is
| being used to exclude competitors.
| snailmailman wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this rule is only there to stop the
| hundreds of "flashlight" apps that used to exist.
| (Although, they appear to still exist) There isn't tons
| of innovation or competition in "flashlight app" other
| than adding advertisements. There used to be a bunch of
| them that would only get popular out of necessity. The
| ones I'm seeing now in the App Store do seem to have non-
| default behaviors like "strobe light" at least, so they
| aren't true clones of native functionality.
|
| Apple isn't using that rule to take down alternate
| weather apps, despite them having their own native
| weather app. There's still plenty of QR code scanning
| apps, despite that being built into default camera app.
| kevincox wrote:
| So what? Why not let there be flashlight apps if users
| find them useful? Apple doesn't have to recommend them in
| the app store and can sort them to the bottom of search
| results page. But why can't the exist. If people don't
| want them they will choose not to install them.
| diggan wrote:
| > But why can't the exist.
|
| I'm fairly sure "Only high quality apps should be
| available to users" was said more than once when the
| Apple AppStore first launched (together with the second
| or third iPhone I think?). Apple isn't really into the
| whole "users can choose what's best" thing, which once
| you understand this, a lot of their choices become
| understandable (albeit shitty none the less).
| Osiris wrote:
| And yet Apple has shown many times a willingness to use
| vague language of their rules to block apps they don't
| want. Past behavior can't predict future behavior.
| frollogaston wrote:
| No, there's a separate rule against making the kind of
| app there are already too many of.
| guelo wrote:
| Flashlight apps were a 3rd party innovation. Apple didn't
| originally realize that the camera's light could be used
| that way. I wonder how many other useful features don't
| exist today because of Apple/Google's greed prevent a
| truly free smartphone market.
| scosman wrote:
| I've never understood this Apple criticism (scherlocking).
| Someone built a search for your files, so it's not right
| for Apple to build a pretty key feature into the OS?
|
| There's a lot of fair criticisms of Apple, but they don't
| have to be absolutely first at everything or never enter
| the market.
| rpdillon wrote:
| The key criticism is the final step. They don't only
| duplicate the functionality. They then ban the original
| implementation from their stores because it can create
| "customer confusion".
| sunaookami wrote:
| This has never happened.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Not explicitly (because that might be too openly anti-
| competitive even for Apple) but Apple refused to allow
| f.lux into the App Store, and it had to be sideloaded -
| and Apple leaned on them to stop offering that.
|
| When Apple did offer Night Shift in iOS 9.3 it made the
| APIs to do this Apple-only, for ... reasons. As of today,
| no non-Apple app can modify color temperature of the
| display.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Apple refused to allow f.lux into the App Store
|
| It was using private APIs.
|
| This is _never_ acceptable as it undermines the entire
| security architecture.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > This is never acceptable as it undermines the entire
| security architecture.
|
| Private APIs for security reasons? Sure.
|
| For this? Garbage. There is not a single cogent reason
| that a _color temperature_ API is a security gate. Or if
| you think there is, what is it?
| miki123211 wrote:
| In Apple nomenclature, a private API is an API that your
| app is technically allowed to call, but that is subject
| to change at any moment and has 0 documentation and no
| backwards compatibility guarantees. If Apps were allowed
| to rely on those, they could just stop working across
| minor version upgrades or on new devices.
|
| Those APIs are only there because they're needed by some
| higher-level system library that your app is actually
| allowed to use.
|
| Sure, you could have all libraries be simple shims, all
| calls be interprocess, and all security be guaranteed by
| process boundaries, but that would kill performance.
|
| If you only accept signed code and have W^X protections
| that apps aren't allowed to disable, this way is simpler,
| faster and just as secure.
| consteval wrote:
| While this is true, many, many apps use private APIs.
| Even apps that don't need them. One common use case is
| prevent an app from being debugged or run on certain
| devices - you can achieve that through private APIs.
|
| Even innocuous apps like a calculator can, and do, use
| them for that purpose.
| threeseed wrote:
| Which apps use private APIs ?
|
| The App Store process automatically checks for them and
| blocks submission.
|
| Curious how apps are bypassing this and not sure why they
| would be trying to prevent debugging when it's not
| possible to do this.
| shagie wrote:
| A statement from f.lux about Apple's recent announcement
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10904798 ( 366
| points | Jan 14, 2016 | 193 comments )
|
| The actual reason behind F.lux for iOS being pulled - htt
| ps://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3smf15/the_actual_re
| ...
|
| > Sure, it uses private APIs, but thousands of popular
| projects on Github (like game simulators) or that Apple
| TV web browser project all use private APIs and they are
| just fine.
|
| > The issue is F.lux for iOS is not a true source-
| available download. It includes a full app bundle with
| pre-compiled binary (which in a nutshell, is an extracted
| .IPA file) packed within Xcode to utilize Apple's new
| free signing policy.
|
| > And to making things worse, the same F.lux Xcode
| project does not only allow side loading F.lux itself,
| but also any unsigned IPA file. The only thing a user
| needs is to extract an unsigned IPA and drag all
| resources into the project. This allows pirates to
| install any stolen app, without the need to buy a
| developer certificate. I have tested and believe this is
| the true reason for F.lux project being pulled.
| snailmailman wrote:
| Not allowing third party apps to adjust screen colors
| seems like a reasonable security boundary to me. For the
| most part when you close an app on iOS, it gets closed.
| It doesnt get to keep changing system settings in the
| background. Would be awful if in addition to
| notifications, apps also got to adjust your colors.
|
| Screen tinting like that is exactly the kind of thing
| that should be an OS-feature, not an app feature.
|
| They are similarly quite restrictive on MacOS, with some
| system-impacting features being locked behind
| "accessibility" permissions. So that arbitrary apps can't
| interact with other apps unless they are actually doing
| something that needs it like "being a screen reader".
|
| iOS doesn't have the same sort of permissions. Apps can't
| take over interactions with other apps, or change display
| settings, etc. This is a security boundary. And changing
| that specifically for "changing screen colors" seems
| unnecessary to me.
| miki123211 wrote:
| For context, as a software developer and Mac OS user who
| also happens to daily drive a screen reader, I seriously
| doubt whether you could implement a third-party SR on
| that platform.
|
| It seems that third-party software, even software with
| accessibility permissions, doesn't work on password
| screens (and probably in a few other similarly-secure
| places), and you need those to be accessible. Not to
| mention weird places like system recovery, which (for
| very obvious and understandable reasons) does not allow
| 3rd-party software at all.
|
| I guess you could use a third-party SR for most of your
| system and then toggle VoiceOver on when accessing the
| secure parts, but that would get very annoying very
| quickly.
|
| There's also no 3rd-party access to some speech-related
| features, like the higher-quality neural Siri voices.
| You'd also need APIs for things like automatically being
| informed of incoming system notifications to read them as
| they come in (which the first-party VoiceOver does), and
| those don't seem to be available at all.
| shantara wrote:
| A counter-example: FlickType apple Watch keyboard
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/16/22676706/apple-watch-
| swip...
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It's not exactly a new thing, either. Even back in the
| 80s and 90s, many times Apple either implemented obvious-
| in-retrospect functionality from popular
| freeware/shareware themselves or bought up the shareware
| and rolled it in.
|
| This is also one of the things that makes a big
| difference between Windows and macOS when getting a new
| install/machine set up to basic usability. With the
| former, before I can get anything done there's a whole
| laundry list of things that need to be installed and
| removed (which admittedly is now easier now that winget
| comes preinstalled), while that list is much shorter on a
| Mac. For me personally getting through that phase takes
| at least 3-4x longer under Windows.
| layer8 wrote:
| The issue is that they don't compete on equal footing,
| because they integrate whatever functionality they adapt
| with OS features and/or first-party apps in a way that
| third-party apps can't. That's anti-competitive and
| increases their moat.
| avgDev wrote:
| Then they will hit you with, "We do this for safety of your
| data, we don't want bad actors getting health info from
| your watch".
|
| I enjoy apple devices but hate the walled garden.
| dolmen wrote:
| I don't want Apple either to get access to my health
| info, so I don't have such device from Apple.
| wilg wrote:
| I mean it's also a lot more work to add all the features
| Pebble would need so it could simply be they don't think it's
| worth it (and it probably isn't, given all the other broken
| stuff they need to fix).
| echelon wrote:
| The ONLY answer is antitrust action from every major
| government.
|
| The trillion dollar companies are so massive that they are
| impinging upon every category of business that touches them.
| And they're so massive that their sinnew and tendrils touch
| everything under the sun.
|
| Mobile computing is de-facto owned by two companies. It's
| owned, tightly controlled like an authoritarian government, and
| heavily taxed. Compared with the (formerly?) open web and
| desktop of the 90's - 10's, we've wound up in a computing
| universe where we're all serfs.
|
| We're in a stagnant world where platforms don't evolve because
| that's where the moats lie.
|
| Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta desperately need to be broken
| up into multiple subsidiary companies. It'll oxygenate the
| entire tech sector and unlock pent up, unrealized value for the
| shareholders of these equities.
|
| The reason we seldom see centicorn startups or blockbuster tech
| IPOs is because FAANG (or whatever we call it nowadays) has a
| dragnet where they can snuff out the markets of new upstarts or
| M&A on the cheap.
|
| It costs nothing for Amazon to become Hollywood, buy James Bond
| and Lord of the Rings, become a primary care doctor, become a
| grocery store, and cross-sell all of these highly unrelated
| products on prime advertising real estate. It's essentially
| free for them to put ads at the top of the Amazon store and
| emblazen it on their delivery trucks and boxes. The old media,
| which were once healthy competitors, have to spend hundreds of
| millions to reach the same eyeballs.
|
| We've wound up with Standard Oil 2.0 and it's deeply damaging
| our market. The innovators and innovation capital are no longer
| being rewarded. The calcified institutions are snuffing out
| everything that moves in search of remaining growth.
|
| We must break up these companies. That is the only healthy way
| forward.
| tehjoker wrote:
| isnt it efficient though for these capabilities to exist? why
| not nationalize them instead and make them accountable to the
| public
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Building and maintaining a functional marketplace (e.g.
| through common-sense anti-trust enforcement) is about more
| than just optimizing for a specific outcome...
| tehjoker wrote:
| i just don't get why it has to be a market, we need
| fairly priced and implemented capabilities not wasteful
| redundant implementations
| idle_zealot wrote:
| IMO it makes sense to nationalize things that lend
| themselves to natural monopolies, or sectors where
| innovation has mostly dried up on account of maturity,
| where continued progress is largely driven by tax-funded
| research grants already. I'm not convinced that "computing"
| is such an industry, innovation seems dead there because of
| monopoly. In that case, they should be broken up to drive
| competition-fueled innovation, with careful supervision to
| monitor for and punish anti-consumer behavior, abuse of
| negative externalities, etc.
|
| If it turns out that even then, 10-20 years from now the
| market is still making mostly glass/metal rectangles with
| the same feature set of today, then we can consider
| consolidating that productive capacity for the sake of
| efficiency.
| tehjoker wrote:
| i think this pov buys too tightly into the idea that
| national projects arent innovative they are often more
| innovative than the private sector but it requires buy in
| and focus from their managers and funding from
| politicians
| briandear wrote:
| The Soviet Union had everything nationalized and it always
| accountable only to the Politburo. This idea that
| governments are "accountable" is cute. Government shouldn't
| be running businesses.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| 100% agree that decisive anti-trust action is needed. In
| addition, many of us can (and do) choose to just not
| participate (to the best of our abilities) in the nonsense
| from these companies.
|
| Many of us are not required to use Apple devices (and we
| choose not to). Additionally, many of us are able to choose
| privacy-respecting Android variants (like GrapheneOS). It
| sometimes is less "convenient", but IMHO it is better then
| surrendering to the duopoly...
| fishcrackers wrote:
| I mean you could just not buy apple's stuff
| 9rx wrote:
| Trouble is that most major governments are democratic,
| meaning that the governmental powers that be are the very
| same people (the population at large) who are already not
| willing to do anything about it. The majority will clearly
| isn't there at this time (that can change in the future, of
| course).
|
| Government is a useful tool to clean up the dissenters who
| wish to act against the will of the people, but under a
| democracy you cannot believe that the majority are the
| dissenters. That defies the entire premise.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| I don't think we need any major government intervention.
|
| What we need is a law that requires companies like Apple to
| allow their customers to install and run the software they
| wish, and provide external developers with the same OS
| features their internal teams have access to.
|
| Europe and Brazil already have such laws, though they could
| go farther.
|
| In the US we had this bill, which would have covered most of
| these issues and had bipartisan support:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_App_Markets_Act
| closewith wrote:
| > What we need is a law that requires companies like Apple
| to allow their customers to install and run the software
| they wish, and provide external developers with the same OS
| features their internal teams have access to.
|
| So major government intervention.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Like, government deciding the entire API for their
| operating system.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| If you don't like an iPhone, don't buy an iPhone. Don't
| legislate your consumer preferences on me.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Interoperability is a commons; the market won't protect it
| on its own, because each individual consumer's best action
| is to just get an iPhone and an Apple Watch.
|
| But the market (and society at large) is ultimately worse
| off when Pebble and FitBit and Garmin can't compete on a
| level playing field with Apple Watch-- particularly when
| Pebble is targeting a completely different feature set,
| price point, and battery profile from what Apple Watch
| does.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| I don't, and I won't, but that doesn't really address the
| points in that post. There is nothing any individual can do
| about massive corporate cartels controlling entire
| industries and strangling all potential competition in the
| cradle, like they said anti-trust enforcement is the only
| way. But apparently it'll be difficult to garner support
| for that when people perceive it as an attack on their
| 'consumer preferences'
| echelon wrote:
| Apple and iPhone are a gravitational singularity distorting
| every single market in the world.
|
| Software companies bend the knee to Apple.
|
| Global payments companies bend the knee to Apple.
|
| Entertainment companies bend the knee to Apple.
|
| On and on and on...
|
| You cannot find a corner of the world that iPhone does not
| distort, tax, shape, or control in some shape or fashion.
| Some companies and industries to such an extreme that Apple
| becomes not just their landlord, but their master.
|
| Desktop computing could never do this. Microsoft never had
| such draconian rules.
|
| The automotive market doesn't resemble this. Dozens of
| countries have five or six major automakers. There's
| something for every budget and niche.
|
| Gaming could never do this. There are three major consoles,
| six major PC distribution channels, mobile gaming, indie
| gaming, web gaming, tabletop/physical gaming - that market
| is huge. Honestly, this is what mobile computing should
| look like.
|
| Only mobile computing and the web have become so perverted
| and encumbered. These markets are beyond Standard Oil
| levels of distortion. And the worst part is how massive,
| important, and all-encompassing these markets are.
| Everything in life is touched by these markets.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Mobile computing is de-facto owned by two companies.
|
| Still beats the Windows era when a single company owned
| desktop computing (which was the only type of computing for
| consumers).
|
| > We've wound up with Standard Oil 2.0
|
| Skipped right over Microsoft!
|
| > We must break up these companies.
|
| With Microsoft it was a complex consent decree. (The initial
| ruling to break up the company was overturned.)
| echelon wrote:
| Microsoft of that era is a tiny bug compared to the
| trillion dollar giants of today.
|
| You could install whatever you wanted on Windows. Any
| software, any browser. Microsoft was incredibly open with
| both software and hardware compatibility.
|
| You didn't have to use IIS or C# or Microsoft technology to
| develop software. You could develop and deploy PHP, Apache,
| Perl, C, anything. And about that time, Linux servers and
| distribution were massively growing in popularity. There
| were so many options.
|
| It was even easy to pirate Windows and other software if
| you really wanted to. Basically, it was a complete Wild
| West with lots of latitude and room to navigate for
| everyone. Microsoft really only pursued enterprise
| contracts.
|
| And the market back then was incredibly small. The number
| of desktop broadband and dialup users pales in comparison
| to the total number of smartphone users we have today.
|
| The situation today is wholly different on every level. Two
| companies own how society stays connected, how it conducts
| commerce, and how it shares information. It's gross how
| much power they have. And how they choose to enforce it and
| tax it.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Apple Silicon could not have existed without the vast amount
| of capital that a trillion dollar company like Apple could've
| mustered, TSMC might even be one or two generations behind
| where it is right now if Apple couldn't afford bankroll the
| latest generation and temporarily monopolize it, and for that
| reason alone I'm fine with the state of affairs
|
| It's also great that Apple is able to negotiate with
| countries as an equal wrt. user privacy, iMessage is the only
| e2e encrypted messenger allowed in China, and is currently
| able to mobilize a significant political movement against
| mandatory backdoors in the UK
| distrill wrote:
| it's pretty frustrating how "apple people" just don't care that
| it's apples fault. i routinely hear my wife mutter "i hate
| google so much!" when a google maps integration is being
| intentionally hobbled to keep her using apple maps. or when she
| has trouble managing rcs conversations because somebody in our
| social world has the gall to be on an android phone.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I am aware that apple blocks certain functionality to
| maintain a cohesive and secure experience. It is THE reason I
| buy their products, I want the curation. Otherwise I'd buy an
| android device.
| Volundr wrote:
| That's all well and good. Opting into that knowingly is a
| reasonable decision. Hopefully knowing you've opted into
| that you aren't then cursing Google when they don't support
| some functionality blocked by Apple, or when RCS is poorly
| supported, but instead recognizing this as a trade-off you
| made opting into the Apple closed garden.
| basisword wrote:
| The reason Apple Maps even exists is because Google
| intentionally crippled their Maps app on iPhone in order
| to benefit their own OS.
|
| The reason Google loves RCS is because they spectacularly
| failed 4 or 5 times at introducing their own iMessage
| competitors.
|
| Competing companies often act in their best interests.
| And both Google and Apple offer OS's which have very
| different value systems. I think that's good for
| consumers. If I want open (and all the pros and cons that
| come with that) I can buy an Android phone. If I want
| closed (and the pros and cons that come with that) I can
| buy Apple. If they Apple starts to open up a bit and
| Google locks things down a bit we get the worst of both
| worlds and no true options.
| bloppe wrote:
| The "closed" approach is way better when it involves
| guardrails rather than handcuffs. Pixels offer
| guardrails; they're just as secure as iPhones but offer a
| lot more freedom to power users. Android is a lot more
| than just Pixels though and some of the other OEMs don't
| provide security updates quite as timely, creating a bad
| reputation
| basisword wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. I've seen tech illiterate family
| members screw up Pixels and Samsung devices in the same
| way they screwed up Windows systems in the past. Even the
| most tech illiterate family members have done nothing bad
| to their iPhones. In fact I know one that was still using
| an iPhone 7 until last year and it was very functional.
| Two year old top of the line Samsung phones are crawling
| after two years. All anecdotal of course.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| What do you mean by 'screw up'?
| frollogaston wrote:
| Except forget the Apple ID password, then it's game over
| distrill wrote:
| i had the same problem with this behavior from google as
| i do from apple. i would be just as critical of google
| zealots blaming apple for google shortcomings as i am for
| apple zealots blaming google for apple shortcomings.
|
| this is definitely an apple culture thing though. it's
| such a clear product choice to get apple users to
| pressure their friends into buying apple products.
| sbuk wrote:
| RCS is supported _per the standard_. Google 's
| implementation uses proprietary extensions. It's not the
| ivory tower you seem to think it is.
| bloppe wrote:
| RCS on iPhone just sucks though. All I have is anecdotal
| evidence, but it feels like I only get late or out-of-
| order delivery from iPhones.
|
| Plus iMessage doesn't allow you to send RCS messages from
| your laptop, whereas it's easy to do that with Google
| messages. That makes people with iPhones think RCS is
| worse than it really is. It's just iMessage that's
| intentionally hobbled. Not to mention the hostile UI
| decisions made by Apple, which seems to be the main knock
| against anything non-blue.
| sbuk wrote:
| Arguably, that's more to do with the standard and
| Google's proprietary extensions. The colors thing has
| been discussed ad nauseum. SMS messages have been green
| from day one - see https://youtu.be/G8d7E26WLsY?t=1723.
| If colors were reversed, there'd be the same complaints.
| If the difference between iMessage and SMS were
| highlighted any other way, there'd be complaints too.
| bloppe wrote:
| The standards issue is only relevant to E2EE. It has no
| bearing on the usability issues here. The E2EE issues
| should be fixed soon according to Apple. I'd bet a good
| amount of money the usability issues will remain.
|
| It used to be black text on green:
| https://mobiforge.com/files/iphone-sms-1.jpg
|
| The white-on-acid-green color combination would not make
| it through any accessibility review. It's literally
| impossible for a lot of color-impaired people to see, and
| objectively unpleasant otherwise.
|
| Apple gets plenty of complaints about it. Just look at
| the Apple forums. Their literal advice to fix it is "make
| your friends buy an iPhone".
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> It 's literally impossible for a lot of color-impaired
| people to see_
|
| What form of color blindness doesn't let people
| differentiate between levels of brightness? I checked a
| couple color blindness simulators and it appears legible.
|
| Heck, white on light green appears to be used in articles
| about good design for color blind accessibility without
| any indication that it there's anything wrong with it.
|
| https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/06/improving-color-
| acc...
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| My personal stance on this is that while I'm open to making
| iOS, etc more flexible, it needs to be done in a way that
| cleanly avoids the whole "grandma accidentally installed a
| pile of browser toolbars yet again" problem. I'm confident
| I can manage added flexibility myself but there's a very
| real need for a truly foolproof, social-engineering-
| resistant option to point friends and family without such
| aptitudes toward.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I totally understand that perspective, but I think in
| terms of opportunity cost I just don't think it would
| ever be worth the effort.
| Lio wrote:
| > _I am aware that apple blocks certain functionality to
| maintain a cohesive and secure experience._
|
| The argument is that they don't do it to maintain a secure
| experience but to stop competitors having feature parity
| with their products.
|
| Personally, I find it annoying that my Garmin watch cannot
| reply to text messages on my iPhone.
|
| I also find it annoying that my iPhone nags me to cut
| access to my watch to stop it getting weather updates. It
| doesn't even nag me the once but repeatedly.
|
| It would be one thing if Apple even competed on features
| with Garmin but they don't.
| captainmuon wrote:
| That's their _justification_. I never had security problems
| on Android, and I actually find Android to be more
| cohesive. Just a few things where iOS is uncohesive to me:
| You can customize the keyboard, but it will not work
| everywhere the same. Apps will send you randomly through
| hoops to click some permissions things in settings. App
| settings are sometimes centralized, sometimes in the app.
| There is no single way to "back" to the previous screen.
|
| I actually switched to an iPhone some time ago and was
| expecting it to be like you said. But I was shocked that
| iOS is actually less coherent and a mess in some places,
| and the App store could be curated better. To be honest the
| reason I still use it is because the hardware is really
| good and because it is pretty.
| skyyler wrote:
| What kind of trouble does she have managing rcs
| conversations? It works fine for my partner on their iPhone.
| distrill wrote:
| the thing i hear most frequently is naming group chats with
| mixed device users
| skyyler wrote:
| Weird, that seems to work for my partner. I wonder what's
| breaking for your wife.
| distrill wrote:
| perhaps i'm out of date! this may have resolved with the
| recent increased support of rcs and i maybe haven't heard
| this complaint lately, it's worth checking into again.
| frollogaston wrote:
| I don't like that iMessage = lock-in, but everyone else needs
| to make a better standard first. We got cross-platform
| encrypted covid chat before we got this. RCS has an FBI "do
| not use" warning on it because there's no E2EE. And the
| reason people don't want green bubbles is cause they always
| screw up the group chat.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| There are many anti competitive practices that Apple and
| Microsoft engage in. And a lot of it is not even "preventing"
| something but just bogging it down so it takes a lot of time
| and money and starves out anyone who could challenge them.
|
| But we should also talk about the inverse thing where they give
| themselves an advantage in positive ways. Like for example, iOS
| devices will regularly advertise Apple's own Siri intelligence
| or their own games subscription or news subscription or iCloud
| or whatever. These get special treatment and show up in
| unexpected ways - notifications that you cannot prevent ahead
| of time or in your system menu with an annoying badge you
| cannot dismiss until you click the thing. These are things
| Apple only does does THEIR OWN products and services. It gives
| them an anti competitive advantage against others, but it does
| so not by crippling others but by boosting themselves.
|
| All of this should be illegal. I dislike regulations sometimes,
| for example when EU regulation gets into censorship. But they
| seem to be doing a lot more to help customers and support
| competition than the US. While Trump talked a lot about
| breaking up big tech, I am skeptical as to whether he'll do
| anything to actually support competition and actual free
| markets. It will require regulation, not posturing.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Because everyone here commenting knows the reason?! This is all
| speculation by outsiders. Apple isn't commenting and if they
| did, outsiders wouldn't know if it's the real reason. It could
| be that Apple lacks the patents, for some of these key features
| and they are making the best out of a bad situation. It is what
| it is and we can't be sure why.
| Osiris wrote:
| The reason is irrelevant. Apple watches can do things that
| Apple doesn't allow other non-Apple devices to do.
|
| The law doesn't care why they choose to do it. The result of
| the decision is what constitutes illegal monopoly behavior.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I too have a very capable smartwatch (fitness watch - Garmin
| Fenix) and it's remarkable how different my experience with
| messages and actions are relative to the experience of Garmin
| users with Apple phones.
|
| Garmin Connect always runs in the background on my Android
| phone, watching for notifications, pulling data from and
| pushing data to Garmin servers on my behalf even when I'm not
| using the app. It's third-party, but it's reasonably well-
| written and doesn't nuke my phone battery or data plan -
| Android doesn't need to protect me or their reputation from
| Garmin. I can always check the weather or look at my daily
| workouts or whatever on my watch and trust that it's recently
| been upodated by the phone app phone. Garmin users with Apple
| phones complain that "Garmin doesn't work" after every iOS
| update that further hobbles the Garmin background service.
|
| I get text notifications on my watch for any Android apps that
| provide notifications, and relevant ones (like text messages,
| whether SMS or RCS) provide an option to reply from the watch.
| I tap the top right button on the watch and scroll to "OK" or
| "Thanks" or "Can't talk right now" or whatever one of a half
| dozen canned responses covers 90% of my needs in this mode, and
| don't have to dig my phone out of my backpack or otherwise
| interact. Emails, calendar appointments, clock stuff, music
| controls, etc. all work over the watch. It's just as privileged
| as the phone, I'm not concerned about my Garmin intruding on my
| privacy as protected by Android, I wear the watch 24/7 and it
| has more data on me than the phone!
| lloeki wrote:
| > watching for notifications, pulling data from and pushing
| data to Garmin servers on my behalf even when I'm not using
| the app. It's third-party, but it's reasonably well-written
| and doesn't nuke my phone battery or data plan
|
| > get text notifications on my watch for any [...] apps that
| provide notifications, and relevant ones (like text messages,
| whether SMS or RCS [or iMessage])
|
| I get this behaviour on iOS+Garmin, and can both see
| notification text (even when phone is locked and notification
| content hidden on lock screen) + can dismiss notifications
| just fine with "Clear" action (both points noted in the
| article as not being possible)
|
| Fair enough though, I just can't _reply_ or take a specific
| action in actionable notifications.
|
| Media play pause next prev work as well, and calendars are
| all viewable too.
|
| Widgets that use the phone+app as proxy for network access
| also just work (e.g weather refreshes, or I have a Home
| Assistant widget which hits my self-hosted instance just
| fine)
|
| Apart from replying I don't have a hobbled experience at all.
| fracus wrote:
| I honestly don't think Apple products are a smart choice for
| tech savvy people anymore if they ever were. You are paying a
| premium for easy to use, convenient servicing, and the
| aesthetic.
| vrosas wrote:
| You'll one day hear Apple's lawyers argue in court that
| "security" never meant cybersecurity, only share price security.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| or job security
| jisnsm wrote:
| If iOS only allows you to build a worse experience, then Apple
| customers will leave the platform for Android. The problem solves
| itself.
| Brainspackle wrote:
| No I won't, Android is not a good user experience. I'd rather
| buy an Apple Watch.
| kelnos wrote:
| And this is exactly the problem. Apple presents many of their
| users with bad choices: either buy an Apple Watch and suffer
| from its downsides, or switch to Android, and suffer in other
| ways. Or stick with the iPhone, buy a third-party smartwatch,
| and suffer from and unnecessarily-crippled user experience.
|
| There's no technical reason it needs to be this way. Apple
| just prefers to be anti-competitive and increase their
| profits, than to give their users the as-close-to-ideal
| experience they want.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| You couldn't pay me to go back to Android, having used Android
| from 2009-2020. Apple Watch is fantastic, I'm a little sad that
| they don't provide better integration capabilities to external
| devices. I can only assume that's another anti-competitive
| lawsuit brewing.
| Steve16384 wrote:
| It doesn't if there are only two choices and consumers don't
| like either.
| jisnsm wrote:
| That's not Apple's fault or responsibility. Maybe Android
| should stop sucking.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure it is. Both Apple and Google, through various tactics,
| have ensured that it's virtually impossible for a third
| smartphone OS to be successful to anywhere near the level
| they have been.
|
| Android is fine. It has some downsides vs. iOS, and some
| advantages. But that isn't the point. The point is that to
| make a new smartphone OS (or even one that's based on
| Android, but is independent of the Google ecosystem) that
| can do everything Android and iOS can do is an undertaking
| that few would even bother to take on. That's not due to
| technical challenges, it's due to market barriers that
| Apple and Google have erected. (IMO, the sorts of things
| that we as citizens in a healthy society should not allow
| corporations to do.)
|
| And those that (sorta?) do try to make a competing OS, like
| LineageOS, GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, etc., end up with far less-
| capable phones than a Google-blessed Android phone. (And
| when most/all of those capabilities _are_ present, it 's
| through brittle hacks and compromises that basically turn
| the phone into an imitation of the Google-blessed phone,
| with many of the downsides intact.)
|
| Put another way, it's not Apple's or Google's
| responsibility to make things more competitive, but it _is_
| their responsibility to _not_ make things _anti_
| competitive, and it _is_ their fault when alternatives don
| 't exist because of their anti-competitive behavior.
| presbyterian wrote:
| I don't think this is true. Apple could drop smart watch
| support entirely and I still wouldn't use an Android phone. I
| personally find the user experience infinitely better on iOS
| than on Android, and Apple would have to drop the ball _very_
| bad to get me to switch.
|
| (Note: This isn't because Apple is without faults. iOS and
| macOS are both a mess right now, and iPadOS is even worse. I
| just think that Android is worse than that, and I know many,
| many Apple users are in the same boat)
| beeflet wrote:
| what's so bad about android
| snapcaster wrote:
| Operating system made by advertising company is why it's a
| deal breaker for me
| kelnos wrote:
| GGP mentions "user experience" being "infinitely better".
| I don't think Android being made by an advertising
| company has much if anything to do with it.
|
| I also don't see iOS and Android having much of a
| usability gap. At this point, they have very similar
| feature sets, and the UX is fairly well-polished, even on
| Android -- where yes, it took them a _lot_ longer to get
| there. For the most part, if you think that either
| platform has bad UX, it 's probably just because you've
| used the other one for so long, and you're used to it. (I
| don't think iPhone usability is bad, but on the rare
| occasion I do something on my wife's iPhone, I find it
| frustrating because it just works _differently_ than my
| Android phone.)
|
| At this point I think most (US; can't speak for other
| countries) iPhone users are there mainly because they've
| always been there, and there's fairly strong lock-in and
| switching costs. And iPhones are still something of a
| status symbol, not to mention unnecessary Apple-created
| problems like the "blue bubble envy" nonsense.
| presbyterian wrote:
| > iPhone users are there mainly because they've always
| been there, and there's fairly strong lock-in and
| switching costs
|
| Or perhaps it's because we like iPhones?
| commakozzi wrote:
| shocker huh? After owning a few iPhones since 2007, I
| used and developed for Android for years after release in
| 2010. I despise it. I switched BACK to iPhone and fully
| embraced the ecosystem years ago (macOS, iOS, ipadOS) and
| haven't regretted one second of it. I AM an apple fan
| boy. Why? because i love using my devices and working
| within this ecosystem a hundred times more than any other
| options available. The anti-Apple cult is obnoxious. Just
| don't use them if you don't like them.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Don't search for "apple ad business" or you'll be very
| disappointed. :)
| presbyterian wrote:
| I don't like that it's made by an advertising company, like
| the other commenter said. But more than that it's that it's
| wildly unpolished and inconsistent.
|
| OEMs and carriers shove in their own apps (Samsung is
| especially bad about this: I don't want two apps for
| photos, and files, and messages, and calling, and browsing,
| etc etc). You can (sometimes) disable or uninstall them,
| but they can pop up again after updates, and I don't want
| to have to clean up my device just to use it.
|
| And visually, apps look and feel radically different, all
| over the place. There are apps that still look like they're
| running on Jelly Bean, apps that use modern material
| designs, apps that roll their own UI, and web apps in
| wrappers. Every new app I have to learn how to use it. This
| is an occasional problem on iOS, but it's very rare
| compared to my experience with it on Android.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Same. I actually like that Apple locks down everything to
| their own devices, in general, because I believe (from my
| limited knowledge; I am no insider) it's more secure. Perhaps
| not, but I trust Apple to release products that are fairly
| secure, and update them for several years. Whereas with
| Android, I'd have to trust the phone manufacturer, Google
| (ewww), and all of the companies that have bloatware
| installed by default. I do wish there were more 3rd party
| integrations for those who want them (without sacrificing
| security), but as for me I am perfectly happy giving Apple my
| money to get good hardware and decent software that works
| together well (way better integration than anything in the
| Android/Linux/Windows world).
| vile_wretch wrote:
| Similarly if Apple opened up every API and allowed every
| smart watch to do whatever it wanted, I'd still prefer an
| Apple Watch. I tried using a Garmin and "not being able to
| send an sms" isn't even on the list of things I disliked
| about it. Ugly clunky interface, pogo pin charging, a
| companion app that at times wouldn't look out of place on a
| Windows CE smartphone circa 2006, etc.
| kelnos wrote:
| No, because it's much lower friction to "just" give up and buy
| an Apple Watch (or just do without), even if you don't like it
| and think that the features or design a third-party watch are
| better for you. Or at least _could_ be better, if not for Apple
| 's anti-competitive practices.
|
| The problem is that people don't really have choice. Both iOS
| and Android have positives and negatives, and often those
| positives and negatives are not the same. Choosing one or the
| other is going to have you missing some positives you want, and
| taking on some negatives that bug you.
|
| If this was just the nature of how things have to be, I'd be
| more sympathetic. But the real reason it's this way is due to
| anti-competitive behavior on the part of Apple. There are no
| technical limitations; it's just their business model to
| restrict what people can do with the device they've bought.
| There are certainly some valid security reasons for doing this
| in some cases, but most of it is just to protect their revenue
| streams.
| lozenge wrote:
| How long is the problem going to take to solve itself?
| jisnsm wrote:
| From my argument it follows that Apple customers don't care
| about this.
| beart wrote:
| Isn't this ignoring the lock-in factor? Leaving Apple is
| probably more than just switching a single piece of hardware
| for many users. The entire Apple ecosystem encourages "buying
| in".
|
| As a few examples
|
| * (almost all) bought apps don't transfer
|
| * bought media (music, etc) and how that integrates into the
| software
|
| * icloud and other account services
|
| * replacing your phone + laptop + watch + IOT devices which may
| all be in the apple ecosystem.
|
| So one can easily see how folks who have bought in are willing
| to put up with user-hostile actions.
|
| Of course, Apple is not the only company that uses integration
| as a way to retain customers. However, from personal
| experience, I feel Android is a bit more open (at the cost of a
| more fractured experience). I can definitely understand the
| pros of not having to deal with carrier installed garbage when
| purchasing a device.
| shuckles wrote:
| Another company that would like Apple to donate R&D resources to
| them to add iOS API for free.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Another company that would like Apple to not expose
| functionality to their first-party ecosystem and refuse to
| expose it to third parties even with user consent.
|
| If the functionality isn't available to _anyone_ , fine, so be
| it. If the functionality exists on the Apple Watch, it should
| be done through an API.
| shuckles wrote:
| Surprised there are professional developers who seem to be
| clueless about the vast difference in the cost of developing
| 3p API versus internal only functions. The basic difference
| between public and private has been captured in language
| design for decades now.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I'm well aware of the cost difference, but the cost of
| internal-only functions is potentially measured in
| antitrust actions.
|
| Microsoft, post-antitrust action, made a _very careful_
| point of ensuring new functionality in first-party products
| like Office only used things that had public APIs.
| shuckles wrote:
| Yeah it does seem like antitrust is the wedge employed by
| 3rd parties who would like Apple to do free R&D for them,
| most ironically by Spotify which holds are arguable
| monopoly on music streaming.
|
| I'm glad that antitrust enabled a rich ecosystem of
| Microsoft Office alternatives and competitors.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Apple certainly doesn't have to do free R&D for third
| parties. They could, instead, not ship features that work
| exclusively with other Apple products. Or, hey, there's
| also the other valid option of "don't be the exclusive
| gatekeeper of the platform", they're welcome to take that
| one too.
|
| When Apple goes up against governments over encryption,
| I'll cheer them on with everyone else. When Apple is
| engaging in
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) , I have
| zero sympathy for them.
| mrlatinos wrote:
| The APIs already exist...
| shuckles wrote:
| Then what's the post complaining about? Just use the API!
| mrlatinos wrote:
| You obviously know that's not possible. They are private
| APIs kept for Apple's ecosystem lock-in.
| shuckles wrote:
| Private API is an oxymoron. If it's a private
| implementation, then there's a lot of work that would
| need to be done to make it API!
| croes wrote:
| You mean APIs the Apple watch already uses?
| shuckles wrote:
| It's not API. That's the whole complaint of the post. Just
| because it's implemented internally does not mean it's ready
| for framework support. Have you ever built an API before?
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Isn't that included in the price of the device you buy?
| shuckles wrote:
| What is "that"? The iOS SDK is public knowledge and it makes
| no guarantees about future features.
| film42 wrote:
| iOS wearable integrations are bad, but somehow Meta Ray-Bans are
| very good. Voice assist to start a call, send a text, read a
| notification, etc. Did Meta get special access to do this?
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Does it do anything that the linked article says it can't do?
| film42 wrote:
| > It's impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text
| messages, or perform actions on notifications (like
| dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things.
|
| Unless I'm crazy, I think I've used my Meta Ray-Bans to do
| all of these things at some point. So is this a watch only
| limitation that Meta was able to avoid?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| It might be because Meta iOS app is handling some of that
| handoff and its not possible to do these action purely via
| the BT api? It seems like in the end they recognize if that
| had an iOS app they could accomplish some of their wishlist
| items. However, there are other valid critiques here.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Seems to be correct, according to [0] the user needs to
| link the Meta View app with WhatsApp, not sure if the
| link is then made on the cloud or on the local device...:
|
| "Use the Meta View app to connect Ray-Ban Stories and
| Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to WhatsApp on your phone."
|
| [0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/836703167795647?locale=en_US
| &cms_id...
| kemayo wrote:
| It seems to say that it can do it:
| https://www.meta.com/help/ai-glasses/647079267216457/
| petemir wrote:
| On (FB) Messenger and WhatsApp. It's not the same.
| jimbokun wrote:
| So just like Apple they are leveraging integration with
| other products they own.
| jsight wrote:
| That sounds like FB Messenger and WhatsApp. I'm guessing
| they do some server side workaround that wouldn't work
| for regular text messages or Apple-y messages.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Did Meta get special access to do this?_
|
| Apple would never give Meta access to private APIs. Eric has
| access to everything that the Meta View app is doing.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| We have seen competitors (big, well-known apps) do things on
| iOS that most definitely are not possible with public APIs.
| Either Apple willingfully provides access to these APIs to a
| select few companies, or they don't care that they reverse-
| engineer private APIs and then use them. If it's the latter,
| the competitor app was probably too big to be banned from the
| app store for this. Apple was unwilling to comment on the
| situation when we asked them.
| iamcalledrob wrote:
| Often this is via special entitlements [0]. Published APIs,
| which you're only allowed to use if Apple approve your
| request.
|
| Apple typically don't publish the criteria for when they
| approve entitlements, so it's almost impossible to get
| approved. You need to be a big company with contacts inside
| Apple.
|
| Meta, Google etc. will all have negotiated a bunch of these
| entitlements for their own apps. But smaller companies are
| totally shut out.
|
| [0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources
| /en...
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| I've still had some settings thrashing with my raybans -
| sometimes they will refuse to read messages and ask me over and
| over to enable a setting, which is already enabled. Seems more
| likely to be an Apple issue than Meta given it has roughly
| coincided with iOS upgrades.
| Lio wrote:
| For voice integration, you can just provide a bluetooth
| microphone on you device and have it access Siri. Garmin have
| tried the same strategy on some of their watches.
|
| What you can't do is reply to a text without using voice, which
| is what I'd like.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >For voice integration, you can just provide a bluetooth
| microphone on you device and have it access Siri. Garmin have
| tried the same strategy on some of their watches.
|
| Interesting. This indicates that the inability for my Amazfit
| Balance to do this is indeed an artificial limitation, and
| not something that Apple prevents. <https://np.reddit.com/r/a
| mazfit/comments/1j3ftbr/why_cant_ba...>
| Avamander wrote:
| If your watch does not support Bluetooth Classic with the
| headset profile then you can't pretend to be a mic. So
| watches with Bluetooth LE only can not utilize Siri.
| TMWNN wrote:
| That makes sense! Thank you for the explanation.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I wonder if you could synthesize a voice with TTS saying "hey
| siri, send a text to X saying Y", and send that over
| bluetooth as if it was mic input.
| jimbokun wrote:
| So Pebble needs to open a Siri connection, ask it to read the
| latest text, then speech-to-text the response and show it on
| the watch.
|
| And then the same in the other direction.
| sabellito wrote:
| Some 6 years ago I bought new bluetooth headphones. Every time
| I'd put them on, my macbook would open apple music (I didn't even
| know it was installed). Every time. No way to disable it, I
| really tried. Stopped shy of doing some kernel stuff.
|
| Sold that laptop, and have never touched anything apple since.
| Probably never will. The hardware's good, everything else is an
| embarrassing mess.
|
| Sent from my Ubuntu.
| mrpippy wrote:
| Your headphones were probably sending an AVRCP 'play' command
| every time they connect. This was a common problem with older
| car radios too.
| jandrese wrote:
| Not only every time they connect, but every time they are
| paused or stopped too. My car has this problem. It was not
| possible to pause the music, it would always immediately
| restart play.
| CharlesW wrote:
| It's because your headphones were sending a Bluetooth "Play"
| command on connect (my Honda Odyssey does this as well). For
| anyone else with this problem, you can override this silly
| default in macOS using Privacy & Security > Bluetooth, adding
| Music, then turning off Bluetooth access for Music.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Music isn't in the list of apps and I don't see any way to
| add it. I would love to fix this in my car radio.
| PokestarFan wrote:
| There should be a "+" button you can click and select any
| app. The Music app is located in the /Applications folder.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Oh I misread. My problem is on iOS.
| jahnu wrote:
| Same. Extremely irritating.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Just did this, pressing play on my headphones still launches
| Apple Music.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > you can override this silly default
|
| But Apple sure won't, seeing as Music.app conveniently
| displays a modal advertisement for Apple Music when it
| launches.
|
| Silly defaults. At what point does it stop being silly and
| start being a dark pattern?
| kevincox wrote:
| That is maybe questionable behaviour from the headphones. But
| the worse problem is that there is no way to change what
| media player is used. I don't use Apple Music, have no songs
| in it and no subscription. But it opens that rather than the
| player I do use.
|
| I'm pretty sure I have also launched Apple Music accidentally
| with some keyboard button or touchbar action. For a "premium"
| device having to close Apple Music (effectively an ad) a few
| times a week is not acceptable.
| jedbrooke wrote:
| just in case anyone else is running in to this problem, there
| is a solution
|
| https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
|
| this will prevent itunes/apple music from opening
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Apple has been restricting iPhones from being awesome since 2007.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Remembering the uproar when Apple said 3rd party apps would
| have to be web apps, but didn't ship the features needed to
| write good web apps on the first iPhone? The term PWA wasn't
| coined until 8 years later, and Apple has long been accused of
| hobbling its web stack to incite people to ship on the App
| Store and pay their 30% tithing.
| meatmanek wrote:
| The term PWA may not have been coined until 2015, but you
| could definitely save a webpage to your home screen on
| i(Pad)OS at least as early as 2010. Granted, it was pretty
| limited, but you could put an icon on your screen, have it
| open a web view that was somewhat separate from Safari, store
| data with localstorage, and generally look and feel kinda
| mostly like a native app.
| xyst wrote:
| One of the many reasons I have been exiting out of the Apple
| ecosystem.
|
| They are so damn hostile to any third party integration, reserve
| apis for first party usage, and give middle finger to developers
| with their abusive fee structure (Apple takes a 30% cut ...).
|
| Only thing left is for my devices to age out (I am in deep with
| phone, watch, mbp, mba, and even Mac Studio M1 "ultra")
| nehal3m wrote:
| You can always sell them, they hold their value pretty well.
| tmshapland wrote:
| "So we're going to make a damn iOS app." Love it.
| mns wrote:
| Some of the things mentioned in the post seem to work just fine
| with Garmin watches. Maybe because Garmin is just bigger they
| have the resources to implement some of the things (like third
| party devs publishing various watch apps and faces that are in
| the Garmin store). Same with notifications, yes, you can't do
| actions from notifications, but I have notifications "hidden" or
| whatever that feature is if the phone is locked and they show up
| just fine on my Forerunner.
| nradov wrote:
| Replying to text messages on Garmin watches doesn't work with
| iPhones. It works fine with Android. But Apple has restricted
| that messaging functionality to only their own watch in a
| monopolistic and consumer hostile move.
| drewg123 wrote:
| The notification feature that I miss most from Android+Garmin
| on iOS+Garmin is the ability filter what apps notifications can
| go to my watch. Its apparently possible, as Coros seems to have
| done it.
|
| But after hearing repebble's complaints about not being able to
| do things that Garmin can do, I almost wonder if different
| vendors may be given different private api exceptions or
| something (just guessing, not an ios dev).
| dmitrygr wrote:
| This article is 100% weapons-grade FUD
|
| > It's impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to [...] or perform
| actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting
|
| REALLY? Why not RTFM?
|
| https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...
|
| >Notification Actions
|
| > Starting with iOS 8.0, the NP can inform the NC of potential
|
| > actions that are associated with iOS notifications. On the
|
| > user's behalf, the NC can then request the NP to perform an
|
| > action associated with a specific iOS notification.
|
| These API have exited for over a decade and plenty of other
| wearables use them. Yes there are some limits, but many fewer
| than the original article implies to create outrage
| croes wrote:
| Where is the part where you can reply to a message?
| etchalon wrote:
| I'd assume it would be a notification action?
| croes wrote:
| Seems there are only two actions: positive and negative.
|
| Hardly useable for a message reply.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| OP said " cannot do A or B". I demonstrated how to do B,
| proving the original statement to be a lie. The fact that you
| still cannot do A irrelevant. Hyperbole has no place in
| technical discourse.
| croes wrote:
| You didn't demonstrate that because
|
| >The NC must neither assume nor try to guess in advance the
| exact action performed on an iOS Notification, because
| these actions are based upon information unavailable to it,
| as well as other factors such as the ANCS version
| implemented by the NP. The NP guarantees that positive and
| negative actions are associated with results that do not
| surprise the user.
|
| So pebble app can't explicitly say dismiss or mute but has
| to hope that the phone does that action on a given
| notification.
|
| Imagine the app says dismiss but the phone's real action is
| just a snooze.
|
| Press X to maybe dismiss doesn't sound like a great
| functionality, does it.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| Lol, you're asking for it by using apple.
|
| I'm still recommending Apple to family members (less support
| needed from me, and I can always say I have Android and can't use
| apple so I can't help). But you have to go all in. If you want
| non apple stuff, just use something else. And if you can use
| Linux etc., why are you using Apple? Other then being lazy, which
| is totally ok.
| infecto wrote:
| I guess you could call it lazy, I value my time and have zero
| desire to tinker with the daily products I use. I am sure some
| enjoy it but I do not.
| layer8 wrote:
| And GP is saying that that's totally okay.
| infecto wrote:
| I am saying folks who use Linux do not know how to utilize
| their time well. It's tongue in cheek at the commentary to
| the GP but hope that makes more sense to you.
| consteval wrote:
| People say this about Linux but it's not been my
| experience. Granted I'm 10 years deep now, but everything
| just works always and is exactly how I like it. Even
| basic things like menus changing doesn't happen on
| Debian. I'm good to go.
|
| Windows? Provided it doesn't shit the bed, which it often
| does, things change randomly for no reason and beyond
| your control. One day you boot up and boom - the UI for
| x, y, z is different. And there goes 10 hours spread over
| the next month while you relearn.
|
| iOS is fairly decent about this too.
| bigyabai wrote:
| By posting comments on HN you officially waive your right
| to criticize other people for wasting their time. We are
| all here throwing away our lives, arguing over which OS
| is more demeaning to use because everyone is mutually
| afraid of being compared to Windows users. Stop being
| insecure about your reliance on commercial software and
| find a productive hill to die on.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Other then being lazy, which is totally ok.
|
| It's not OK. This collective laziness and convenience is our
| number one enemy. People don't want to be responsible, they
| want some corporation to manage everything so they don't have
| to think about stuff.
|
| We need more people to take responsibility and use Linux and
| free software and hardware. Owning the computing system means
| being responsible for it, and we need to get people to accept
| that responsibility. The less of us there are, the more
| business and financial sense it makes for them to just straight
| up ignore us as some irrelevant vocal minority.
|
| We should all own our computers, and there should be so many of
| us that they have to suck it up because not doing so means they
| take a big hit to their profits.
| joshstrange wrote:
| This is such an incredibly HN take.
|
| What are you seeing in the world that would led you to think
| the average Joe can use Linux without someone like us
| supporting them? Maybe not day to day but they are absolutely
| going to run into pain points like "Netflix is low quality"
| or "I need to install this windows app for this new gizmo I
| bought".
|
| It's a fantasy world that Linux desktop is good enough for
| most people, it just is. I love Linux and use it on all my
| servers but come on.
| consteval wrote:
| It's not a fantasy, we were there at some point and we
| deliberately moved from it.
|
| When Unix was the norm, everyday employees knew how to
| navigate a shell. In highschool I had a friend working at
| the bank. You know what she did all day? Ran SQL queries to
| make reports. No degree. She wasn't a programmer. She was a
| financial analyst.
|
| Now we have people constructing database systems in an
| excel workbook on a share drive somewhere, but even that's
| fading. Now we have people creating systems in Discord and
| spending 20 hours a week moving data from point A to point
| B. Tasks that someone 20 years ago could trivially
| automate. They don't know how anymore.
|
| We have lawyers paying 20 paralegals to maintain and
| consolidate a document shared between 10 parties with 50
| revisions floating around. We've had version control for
| decades. They refuse to learn. They would rather spend the
| enormous amounts of man hours doing what is essentially
| manual labor.
|
| It's clear that computers are a huge part of our lives. You
| can learn to use them or you can burn hours - but you can't
| opt out.
|
| I mean, Jesus Christ kids these days don't know what a
| directory is. We had a short window of computer literate
| everyday people and then poof! Gone! But the need for
| computers is still here. And we can't quite talk to them
| and tell them what to do yet.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| Don't recommend Apple if you know better. Not everybody does
| know better.
|
| You can just say that you don't have enough time or spoons to
| do free tech support.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| If there's a case to make on Apple hindering a competitive
| landscape, then it would possibly be a case of violation of the
| European Union's DMA (Digital Markets Act), as Apple is not
| allowed to favor their own services over those of competitors in
| visibility, functionality, or integration within iOS.
|
| But the EU is a blunt instrument that needs to be sharpened
| sufficiently with explicit facts. And then still, possibly a very
| slow instrument...
|
| As for the US justice system.....not sure whether there is any
| interest to pursue such a case these days...
| bsimpson wrote:
| Apple has also shown its not shy about geofencing the remedies
| to only help people physically located in the EU's
| jurisdiction, with a billing address to match.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Indeed. But i.e. India followed with similar demands based on
| EU's DMA Regulation, and so could other countries then.
|
| In a ideal world US would lead the way, as it's the most
| influential market especially for US companies. But I don't
| expect this to happen...
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Similar thing is going on with the Spotify Apple Watch app,
| probably so that people migrate to Apple Music...
|
| see this discussion, for example:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/1h6qmrw/spotify...
| snotrockets wrote:
| With Spotify app, some issues seem to be due to Spotify
| themselves. For example, even when you explicitly download
| music to your watch, the app needs network connection to start
| playing. This seems to be explicit design decision on Spotify's
| part.
| coolspot wrote:
| Likely a condition from IP holders to make sure the play is
| counted and paid for.
| kevincox wrote:
| Pennywise pound foolish and harming UX at the same time.
| They could just require that Spotify logs the plays and
| uploads them on the next connection. Resulting in more
| plays and more money. But instead they block it for the
| 0.1% of the time that the watch is lost, destroyed or
| reinstalled before that sync happens.
|
| And people wonder why piracy happens.
| crwll wrote:
| Garmin watches can start Spotify playback offline just
| fine. You need to have synced your playlist within last 30
| days, IIRC, and that's it.
| sroussey wrote:
| I dunno, I use the spotify apple watch app just fine
| ATMLOTTOBEER wrote:
| Do you listen without your phone? Ime the app is fine with
| phone nearby, but for independent playback from just the
| watch it's trash.
| mafuyu wrote:
| ANCS gang rise up
| rickdeckard wrote:
| > "Apple's "Watch Policy" annoys me, but not enough to switch to
| Android. I hope Apple will be forced to improve their
| compatibility with other watches."
|
| The conundrum of "[xyz] annoys me, but not enough to [do anything
| about it], yet I hope [Company] will be forced to improve [xyz]"
|
| So where is that 'force' expected to come from...?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| If there are effectively two choices and both of them do things
| you don't like, "it's your fault for not switching to the other
| one" isn't a very useful argument
| rickdeckard wrote:
| The question is more, where is that 'force' expected to come
| from which should make them change their way? Just hopes and
| prayers?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Regulation?
|
| When a market is stuck in a local maximum, an external
| force would be beneficial to push it out of it.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| But who should drive such regulation then, elected
| representatives which represent constituents who can't be
| bothered to push for it..?
|
| THAT'S the conundrum.
|
| The market urgently requires regulation, but it also
| became so convenient so fast and affects end-users only
| indirectly, so there is no sufficient momentum to drive
| this change...
| briandear wrote:
| I don't want Chuck Schumer dictating how tech should
| work. Most elected officials are idiots outside of the
| domain of politics.
| 9rx wrote:
| Unless regulation is the problem[1], you need the will of
| the people[2] to see regulation come into force. But if
| the people had the will, they could just see it through
| already. No need for regulation.
|
| [1] Which it is in the case of computing. Intellectual
| property law makes direct competition against the law.
|
| [2] Assuming a democracy.
| Pfhortune wrote:
| > But if the people had the will, they could just see it
| through already.
|
| How does this work in the context of this discussion?
| 9rx wrote:
| There are a lot of contexts floating around, but you are
| meaning something like how would the people attain a
| state where they can buy something almost exactly like
| the iPhone, but with less restrictions or perhaps some
| different features, without regulation?
|
| Well, how would they do that _with_ regulation? Have the
| government (i.e. the people) tell Apple remove
| restrictions /add features else they can no longer sell
| the iPhone/operate a business at all, praying that they
| comply - and if they don't you no longer can buy an
| iPhone? -- Which is exactly the same as the people (i.e.
| government) telling Apple to remove restrictions/add
| features else they will no longer buy iPhones/Apple
| products, praying that they comply - and if they don't
| you no longer can buy an iPhone. That can be done right
| now without regulation, if the will is there.
|
| But the will isn't there. Nobody outside of tech
| communities ever thinks about this, and the comparatively
| small number of tech enthusiasts who do, do not form a
| democracy. If they people don't have the will, they won't
| do anything.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The idea that if the people had the will they would see
| it through assumes efficient markets with negligible
| startup costs and informed and rational consumers, which
| is not the way the real world works.
|
| _Microsoft_ - a multi-trillion dollar company, number 2
| in the world by market cap, second to AAPL and several
| positions above Google - tried really hard for several
| years to wedge their way into the mobile phone OS game
| with Windows Phone, adding a third entrant to the market.
| They had name recognition, an easy win for integration
| with user PCs, several compelling features, partnerships
| with huge, vertically integrated hardware manufacturers,
| and an enormous base of IP for programming. But, in the
| end, they failed.
|
| Just because people have a desire for a thing to exist
| does not make that thing exist.
|
| I'd love it if there were another company - call it Pear
| or something - that was just like Apple but allowed my
| Garmin watch to reply to encrypted messages, integrated
| smoothly with my Windows and Linux PCs, allowed
| sideloading apps, alternative browsers, adblock, and
| which gave me a whole lot more customization options.
| I've got the will. Now where's my phone?
| 9rx wrote:
| _> The idea that if the people had the will they would
| see it through assumes efficient markets with negligible
| startup costs and informed and rational consumers, which
| is not the way the real world works._
|
| The idea is that if the will of the people is there, they
| can threaten companies like Apple (or whatever business)
| to shape up to their expectations or see sales come to an
| end. Which is also all the government is going to do.
| After all, (democratic) government and the people are the
| exact same thing. There is no magic. But if the will
| isn't there...
|
| _> tried really hard for several years to wedge their
| way into the mobile phone OS game with Windows Phone_
|
| They never tried building an iPhone clone, which should
| have had no trouble finding a market fit. They couldn't
| do that because regulation doesn't allow it, but without
| that regulation there is no go reason why they wouldn't
| have been able to become a viable competitor.
|
| Microsoft's attempt at a phone, and even Android devices
| for that matter, only compete with the iPhone in the same
| way Soylent Green competes with hamburgers. It kind of
| ticks the same boxes if you look at it through a narrow
| enough lens, but that is not true competition.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The issue is, suppose you want a phone with A, B, C, D and
| E.
|
| In a competitive market, there are a hundred phone OEMs
| providing every combination of those things for various
| prices with various trade offs etc.
|
| In a duopoly, there is one company providing A, another
| providing B and C, and nobody providing D or E. If you
| chose the company providing B and C, but you still want A,
| D and E, what are you supposed to do? Reward the company
| providing even less of what you want?
|
| What you need is more competition.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> what are you supposed to do? Reward the company
| providing even less of what you want?_
|
| Assuming it isn't regulation (e.g. patents) getting in
| the way, you pull up your pants and produce [A, D, and
| E].
|
| If that's too rich for your blood, I suppose rewarding
| the company that got you something close enough at a tiny
| fraction of the cost is reasonable. It is hard to deny
| the value in that.
|
| _> What you need is more competition._
|
| Okay, but if you aren't willing to build [A, D, and E],
| why would anyone else? These things aren't delivered by
| angels from heaven.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The question is, _why_ is it so infeasible to enter the
| market?
|
| In theory it should be possible for someone to do this.
| Phones are made of modular parts. Some companies make
| chips, some make screens, some make operating systems,
| some make app stores, so you go acquire each of the
| parts, make your modifications and start selling your
| phone.
|
| First problem, the best phone chips are made by Apple and
| they won't sell them to you for use in a competing phone.
| Also, they won't sell you their OS or let you use their
| app store. So it's already not possible to satisfy some
| of the requirements, e.g. using a chip of that quality or
| compatibility with existing third party iOS apps.
|
| This is hypothetically more possible with Android, but it
| still isn't. Qualcomm will sell you a chip; it isn't as
| good, so you can't satisfy "use the best chip", but
| they'll sell it to you. You can get Android for free.
| Well, AOSP anyway. But that won't pass Google's Play
| Integrity system, so you've already lost compatibility
| with the existing bank apps. Other Android apps have more
| dependencies on Google APIs that aren't part of AOSP, so
| you've once again lost widespread compatibility with the
| only other market for third party apps, unless you ship
| with Google Play services. At which point you're not
| satisfying the "doesn't hoover up your data and send it
| to Google" requirement.
|
| So anti-competitive behavior on the part of the incumbent
| duopolists is why there isn't more competition, and
| antitrust enforcement would address it. For example,
| break up Apple into its constituent parts. Then Apple
| Silicon is a separate company like AMD or Qualcomm and
| you could buy their chips to use in your own phones, the
| existing App Store becomes a separate entity with no
| monopoly on distributing apps to iOS users, etc.
|
| At which point someone _can_ feasibly produce a phone
| that does everything you want, and then someone would.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> The question is, why is it so infeasible to enter the
| market?_
|
| It is capital intensive, so that is a hurdle, but capital
| isn't that hard to come by if you are doing something
| compelling. It was downright easy in the 2010s.
|
| Regulation is the biggest problem. It is straight up
| against the law to become a direct competitor in
| computing. Even with all the necessary resources, just
| try to build an iPhone clone, but with the addition of
| _Y_ , and see how long you can go before lawyers start
| breathing down your neck. If you make the first day, I'll
| be impressed.
|
| You can try to compete indirectly with something kind of
| the same but different enough to skirt the laws, but
| that's rarely what the market wants, making it difficult
| to justify the effort and capital utilization. You need
| something truly game changing to consider venturing down
| that road.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It is capital intensive, so that is a hurdle, but
| capital isn't that hard to come by if you are doing
| something compelling. It was downright easy a few years
| ago.
|
| Part of the issue is that it isn't _just_ capital
| intensive, it 's capital intensive across a vertically
| integrated market. If _all_ you had to do was make a
| phone chip competitive with Apple 's, or reimplement the
| proprietary Google APIs, or convince other phone OEMs and
| third party developers to use your competing app store,
| you might be able to pull it off. But when you have to do
| all of those things and more? At some point the hill is
| just a sheer cliff.
|
| > Regulation is the biggest problem. It is straight up
| illegal to become a direct competitor in the computing
| space.
|
| Oh, that's definitely a major issue. In theory DMCA 1201
| _has_ an interoperability exception, but the exception is
| narrower than it ought to be and then you would have to
| be willing to stand up for it in court against a megacorp
| with unlimited lawyers. There is no sensible argument for
| not fixing things like that.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> But when you have to do all of those things and more?_
|
| It would be completely insurmountable for one person, but
| distributing the load is what an economy is for. If all
| _you_ had to do was make a competitive chip, and all _I_
| had to do was reimplement APIs, and all Joe Blow had to
| do was <X>... soon we'll have all the pieces.
|
| _> Oh, that 's definitely a major issue._
|
| It might even be the only issue. China could no doubt
| start dumping iPhone competitors on the US market
| tomorrow if the regulatory environment allowed it.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| Eric did exactly what you suggest, and found out he can't
| really build it without permission from the manufacturer.
| So no, you can't just pull up the pants.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| What you need is REGULATION, because the market is
| already too skewed for new entrants to meet a level
| playing field.
|
| But yeah...not a popular opinion here, I know...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| "Regulation" is a dirty word because most regulations are
| written by captured regulators. The last thing you want
| is new rules that permanently entrench the incumbent
| duopoly while pretending that you can tame Godzilla to
| keep as a pet if only the right chains are used.
|
| You need rules that restore actual competition. Accept no
| substitute.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| You can switch to a Linux phone running Mobian today. You
| can barely use it as your daily driver, but that's what I
| do. Be the change you want to see in the world.
| ianferrel wrote:
| > So where is that 'force' expected to come from...?
|
| On the margin, it probably does annoy _some_ people enough to
| do something about it. And even though Apple 's policy on this
| isn't enough to move me, if you combine it with my other
| annoyances about Apple products, eventually the sum will be
| enough.
|
| And we vocalize stuff like this because switching does have a
| cost that I'd rather not pay, so hopefully people who can make
| a change at Apple will see the discontent and fix it so that I
| don't have to pay the switching cost.
| kevincox wrote:
| Because everyone is on a spectrum. [xyz] wasn't the straw to
| break this user's back, but it will be the tipping point for
| some number of users. [xyz] is also moving this user closer to
| the edge, so when Apple does [abc] the sum of both is now
| enough to move this user.
|
| You can't expect that everyone who is bothered by an issue
| switch away from a platform. The switching cost is significant
| (and Apple works hard to make it as high as possible). Not to
| mention that the platforms (really one notable competitor) that
| they are considering switching to also have [def] and [ghi]
| that the user doesn't like which is also counterbalancing the
| decision.
| noname120 wrote:
| There is a thing called regulation.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I think the problem is that nobody makes a smart watch as good
| as the Apple Watch, so people already in the ecosystem have no
| real reason to care that it's their only option. There's a
| reason Linus Sebastian has been wearing Apple Watches for years
| despite being a self-proclaimed Android fanboy.
|
| This is only getting attention now because these new Pebble
| devices are offering an Apple Watch alternative people actually
| want.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| The article is literally describing aspects where Apple
| prevents competitors to offer a COMPARABLE experience to an
| Apple Watch on iOS.
|
| There is no equal opportunity to compete in the market of iOS
| users if you try to compete with Apple.
|
| I think that's part of the problem.
| bsaul wrote:
| The whole iOS extension mechanism should be illegal. It's such a
| clear advantage to apple's own apps, i don't understand how
| nobody has every sued Apple about it.
| dcchambers wrote:
| Stuff like this is the reason iOS/iPadOS will never be serious
| general purpose computing platforms.
| rahkiin wrote:
| Which they never advertised it to be. Nor is my toaster and my
| oven or my xbox
| bhelkey wrote:
| ~70% of the 8 billion people in this world use a smartphone
| [1]. It is the primary computer for a huge percentage of
| these people [2].
|
| Comparing mobile phones to toasters, ovens and gaming
| consoles is disingenuous.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-
| smartphone...
|
| [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-
| mob...
| sbuk wrote:
| It's equally disingenuous to compare them to "general
| purpose computers" too, in that case. A primary computing
| device doesn't have to be a "general purpose computer".
| rahkiin wrote:
| It might be the primary communications device.
|
| So maybe we should look at our definition of computer in
| this context. As almost everything contains software
| programmable controllers these days, that cannot be the
| definition.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| (Though only in a small percentage of the world are those
| smartphones primarily iOS devices....)
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| They'll get by...lol
| resource_waste wrote:
| I read Darwin recently and he talks about how weak insects will
| use deception methods to compensate for their lack of strength
| and it reminded me of Apple.
|
| They arent the best, they are never 1st, they are 2nd or third or
| beyond.
|
| Instead they found niches in marketing. Read the word "Security"
| or "Privacy" in white and black text in their commercials, no
| actual claims on either. Just the words. They have stylish
| products with their celebrities, dancing people, and blue
| bubbles. None add to the strength to the product. In the LLM
| world, they've tricked people into thinking 'unified RAM' and
| integrated video cards are equivalent to an Nvidia GPU.
|
| Specifically on topic, iPhones seemed to always under perform in
| features. This is yet another example.
|
| Their track record makes it obvious, but most consumers won't
| notice. That is why the deception works. I used to be an Android
| Zealot who preached the immorality of Apple, but I genuinely
| stopped caring that other people were making mistakes and Apple
| was exploiting them. If anything, I take notes personally how to
| be more like Apple, save my strength and get positive outcomes.
| liuliu wrote:
| I think, we fundamentally lack a mechanism to enforce secure /
| privacy aware APIs without resorting to trusted inner-circle type
| of things. I am already not comfortable with Apple picking
| winners (such as giving Zoom special entitlement but not the VOIP
| apps you want to distribute by your own). Apple trusting their
| own apps more than other apps is another symptom of this and it
| is not helping their anti-trust situation even if it is with
| good-will.
|
| And "giving people choice" won't work neither because people will
| just tap whatever checkbox you give them (the internet should
| never forget that Facebook SDK just forces to accept "The App is
| Tracking You" notification and most users tapped yes).
| wpm wrote:
| Quicktime Player.app gets an entitlement called
| `com.apple.private.tcc.allow`, giving it unprompted access to
| the Camera, Microphone, and Screen Capture.
|
| An MDM administrator, managing a computer or device _owned_ by
| an organization, cannot grant those permissions to anything
| without user consent. For good reason!
|
| So why the *fuck* does Apple think they're entitled to?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Replace MDM administrator with 'malware author' or 'spy
| software' to get your answer. There is functionally no
| difference between a regular company doing MDM wanting to
| bypass camera permission prompts and a hacker who has
| tricked/forced the user into enrolling into MDM.
|
| Now, replace 'Apple' with 'malware author'. What's the
| difference? Well, for one, a hacker has nothing to lose and
| everything to gain from snooping on your webcam. Meanwhile,
| if Apple mishandles this permission or used it to beam video
| data to HQ, there's a high likelihood hundreds of millions of
| dollars of iPhone or Mac customers are lost, resulting in
| billions of dollars in stock value loss.
| Avamander wrote:
| It's not very trivial to manage an Apple device and Apple
| would shut down those ABM tenants real quick. Not to
| mention, supervision requires enrollment pre-setup, which
| is really difficult.
|
| So "just replace x with y" does not really work in this
| context, MDM is vastly more effort than you think and OP-s
| point still stands.
| joshstrange wrote:
| MDM is not easy but you can enroll devices after the
| fact, pre-enrollment isn't the only option. But yes, it's
| a PITA to deal with even at the best of times.
| Avamander wrote:
| You can, but that does not give you a supervised device,
| as I said.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Ahh, maybe I'm mistaken or maybe iOS works differently. I
| believe you can enroll it in MDM and then you have 30 or
| 60 days to kick it out at any time and then it becomes
| fully locked in. Or perhaps I have my terminology wrong.
| I only scratch the surface of MDM at my company.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean the reason is because Apple, the people who made the
| security boundary, and Apple the people who made Quicktime
| are the same people.
|
| I'm not saying it's not anti-competitive but it's fine from a
| security context. Apple knows exactly how Quicktime behaves,
| that it doesn't act maliciously, and can't be updated to do
| so.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Apple knows exactly how Quicktime behaves, that it
| doesn't act maliciously, and can't be updated to do so.
|
| Yes, it's physically impossible for an Apple developer to
| accidentally or maliciously introduce an exploit into QT
| and for it to elude security or code review...
|
| I've never heard a security posture that is "well, we know
| what your tool does, so it doesn't need any security
| controls".
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm sure that could happen, but it's not really any
| different than exploiting some other part of the system.
| You make a fine case that the nature of this code means
| it will likely be under less security scrutiny than such
| an entitlement warrants but that's Apple's problem now.
|
| > well, we know what your tool does, so it doesn't need
| any security controls
|
| This really isn't that weird. The camera app doesn't need
| to ask for permission to use the camera/mic. And the why
| is because the thing you're worried about is some random
| 3rd party app capturing audio/video without the user's
| knowledge or intent. You know the built-in camera app
| doesn't do that because you wrote it, so it's fine to
| give it an entitlement to bypass the usual prompts. It
| can also access your photos without prompts because the
| threat model is malicious exfiltration and again, you
| know it doesn't do that.
| consteval wrote:
| > it's fine from a security context
|
| No, it's not. For example, even if you know every device on
| your network you STILL need network segmentation.
|
| Running your card readers and corporate computers on the
| same subnet is asking for trouble - regardless of if you
| control both.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Remember when people realized that Apple apps were bypassing
| application-level firewalls like LittleSnitch?
|
| First it was denied, then it was a bug, then it was a
| "temporary workaround" while ... something ... was updated.
|
| And that was just ... accepted as an answer. I could never
| fathom why TextEdit might need a kernel extension in the
| first place, let alone unfettered/unmonitored network access.
| I don't even think it was necessarily nefarious, just "we
| know best, shut up and buy".
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Think about why they ask for access in the first place - it's
| because camera access or screen access might be unexpected
| for the app you've just started. Or maybe you don't trust the
| app with your camera (looking at you, Instagram).
|
| QuickTime Player is already on your Mac and you already know
| what it does when you launch it.
| modeless wrote:
| I sure didn't know QuickTime Player could read my screen or
| listen to my microphone...
| badc0ffee wrote:
| I guess that's fair, because the name says Player. But
| still, the way to not use those features is to not use
| those features. Unlike a third party app you don't need
| to worry about it trying to read your screen if you
| haven't explicitly started a screen recording. If you
| can't trust Apple to do that then you can't trust Apple
| to block third party apps from recording, either.
| kimixa wrote:
| Security boundaries are for more than intentionally bad
| apps, but things like bugs causing code execution or
| other ways of abusing their privileged position.
|
| An app decoding complex untrusted media files from the
| internet? It should have the _absolute minimum_
| permissions.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| That's not the problem Apple was trying to solve here.
|
| I suppose I could see a system where every camera/screen
| recording access by QuickTime Player forces a popup,
| because you can't say whether it happened intentionally
| or due to opening a malicious video file, but that would
| have to be opt-in for sure.
| shuckles wrote:
| There are millions of ways you implicitly trust Apple
| software to not violate your trust when you use their
| products. The whole point is Apple can gauge whether it
| is appropriately stewarding that trust in first party
| code much better than it can with third party code.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _So why the *fuck* does Apple think they 're entitled to?_
|
| Because they manufactured the device, and you bought it?
|
| And honestly, I support them. Because starting QuickTime is a
| user action, and it only records when I want it to. QuickTime
| is an app I trust.
|
| I _don 't_ trust an organization admin not to record me
| without my consent. As we've heard the horror stories of
| schools spying on students with school laptops while they're
| in their own homes, their own bedrooms.
|
| I trust Apple a whole lot more than I trust an org admin.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I am already not comfortable with Apple picking winners
|
| This is what I like most about them! Just pick something that
| you think is good. If I like what you pick I'll keep buying
| from you.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| It's likely a priority issue. They have limited software
| resources but have so many products to support and develop, they
| will like any company weight what fits their future roadmap and
| strategy. Saying they purposely hobble watch devs isn't really
| true
| pat_space wrote:
| My Garmin Fenix 6 refused to stay connected to my iPhone without
| deleting the bluetooth device and re-adding it, until I enabled
| location services for Garmin Connect to Always Allow. This
| contradicts documentation but is the only way I could get it to
| work.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Apple: "It seems letting other watch devices have access to all
| the capabilities the Apple Watch has will commodize it. But it
| will make them happy. Let's do it anyways, our shareholder
| shouldn't mind us allowing our watch to get cannabalized".
| sergiotapia wrote:
| The best decision I made was to switch to Linux Mint and Samsung
| Z Fold 6. I can't believe I was ever a fan of apple products.
| Hobbled walled garden products. If you're in tech you should not
| use apple products. Unless you're building an iphone app.
| skydhash wrote:
| I got on the apple train on Mojave. Before that I was enticed
| by iOS 6. It was a good platform. But now it just have too much
| restrictions and other weirdness like not being able to delete
| apple's apps, writing files on network shares, not able to
| adjust system fonts (like the menu bar).
|
| While I still keep the Mac for professional purpose, I move
| over to fedora.
| vessenes wrote:
| I guess I'll take the contra here on messages integration --
| moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse
| accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in
| the security boundary and therefore security architecture and
| therefore security promises that apple makes on iMessage.
|
| I do not believe average smartwatch users understand what they'd
| be doing if they got this. I do not believe vendors integrating
| with such a thing can do it safely, or even that all vendors
| integrating are good actors.
|
| One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is that
| the ecosystem is closed, and makes automation difficult. It used
| to be impossible nearly, and in that era we had almost no
| iMessage spam. Now it's difficult, and we have moderate iMessage
| spam. But adding hooks to make this automation easy, and worse,
| leave the trust environment as a feature is just wrong.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Opening up a BLE API for iMessages is not going to impact
| iMessage spam whatsoever. It will impact Apple Watch sales
| though.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Hey, there we are.
|
| That's exactly it.
|
| You've always been able to use Applescript to send iMessages
| on a Mac.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse
| accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change
| in the security boundary
|
| Anyone can already screenshot iMessages and move them out of
| the "security boundary"... which btw doesn't exist much, as if
| you have any Mac connected to your iCloud account then those
| messages are being synced to an SQLite DB any process running
| under your user can access.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Did you mean to reply to a different comment?
| culi wrote:
| In what world is screenshotting an iMessage enough to move
| them out of the security boundary
| cmurf wrote:
| World in which I've paired my two devices?
|
| Doesn't the boundary get broken asking messages be read to
| me into a BT audio device?
| seanhunter wrote:
| I don't think you understand what the security boundary of
| iMessage is.
|
| People's phones got compromised by NSO sending images to them
| via whatsapp that used an exploit in one of the image
| libraries to run a malware payload. The security boundary
| isn't about whether you can see your own messages, it's
| whether bad people can root your phone by getting untrusted
| code to run. That's a very different proposition if iMessage
| is a single codebase that they fully own end to end versus it
| has a plugin ecosystem. Having such a plugin system widens
| the security boundary by adding a much larger codebase that
| would require trust.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It doesn't need to be a plugin ecosystem - no third party
| code needs to run within the iMessage
| processes/sandboxes/containers. In fact, no third-party
| code needs to run _at all_ on the phone - all that 's
| needed is to expose an API over BLE that allows previously
| authorized external devices to query/send messages.
| usrusr wrote:
| In defense of the "it's security!" position (which is not
| mine): I think they mean a similar vulnerability could
| exist on the client side of the API. As in someone sends
| manipulated media that targets a vulnerability on the
| third party device, the media gets forwarded through the
| API, now that compromised third party device does bad
| things over the API.
|
| Personally, I think that it's really just a convenient
| third party lockout excuse, but the argument isn't quite
| as bad as it may seem at first glance.
| darkwater wrote:
| Following that line of reasoning, the Apple should ban
| WhatsApp and other messaging systems because they can add
| potential vulnerabilities.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > People's phones got compromised by NSO sending images to
| them via whatsapp
|
| Has this happened on iOS _via WhatsApp_?
|
| I know Apple's had a view problems with this happening with
| iMessage, but always been unsure whether third party app
| sandbox does a good job of containing this?
| threeseed wrote:
| > any process running under your user can access
|
| You will need to grant that app explicit Full Disk Access
| permissions in order for it to access that folder.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Okay then let me grant "Full Notification Access
| permissions" on iPhone and we're good.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| None of this comment chain makes sense... how is this
| relevant when Apple operates across hundreds of
| jurisdictions?
|
| Most of which don't allow users to waive rights based on
| a prompt.
|
| So Apple would still have liability anyways for grandma
| getting scammed, regardless of how expertly worded the
| prompts are.
|
| Which entails extra customer service costs, handling
| lawsuits, etc... that someone has to pay for.
| sunshowers wrote:
| The problem is that this argument happens to conveniently align
| with Apple's financial interests.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| If your value prop to customers is seamless and secure
| default behavior, then of course blocking insecure
| peripherals aligns with your financial interests. This
| doesn't seem nefarious at all to me.
| wobfan wrote:
| This is (I guess) not what OP meant. Apple obviously also
| gains financially from blokcing everything outside of there
| ecosystem, mainly because the majority of Apple users will
| only buy Apple hardware. Obviously, yeah, keeping the
| hardware a bit more safe also helps, but the main financial
| gain is definitely not coming from this.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Note that I said seamless _AND_ secure. Having
| preferential treatment for a limited set of well known
| hardware makes the experience seamless. I like the secure
| and easy hand-off between apple devices. I wouldn 't want
| to give up the security to make it work.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| > I wouldn't want to give up the security to make it work
|
| Android shows that you don't have to.
| sunshowers wrote:
| Why doesn't Apple openly market that it's doing stuff in
| its financial interest? Is it too embarrassed to point that
| out?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow? Every company does what is in
| their own financial interest. Even b-corps and non-
| profits have to keep an eye on their balance sheets.
| sunshowers wrote:
| The point is that Apple does not actually care about you
| on the basis of principles. It only cares about you to
| the extent that it serves its own financial interests.
|
| This is important because Apple could one day decide that
| caring about you no longer serves its interests. This has
| already happened with user experience, where even the
| Settings app now has built-in ads pushing Apple's
| services. It has also happened with security, where Apple
| uses its robust security infrastructure to prioritize
| media company DRM over users' interests.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Do people expect a computer company to love them
| individually?
|
| > Apple uses its robust security infrastructure to
| prioritize media company DRM over users' interests
|
| You mean they follow the law so that they don't get sued
| into the ground?
| sunshowers wrote:
| > Do people expect a computer company to love them
| individually?
|
| I expect corporations to be honest and sincere, and
| present the full argument for why they're doing what
| they're doing. I don't know if "people" in general expect
| this, but if they don't, then their expectations are too
| low.
|
| I am quite sure there is no US law which says Apple must
| build out support for media company DRM. Linux doesn't
| support it and hasn't been declared illegal.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > I expect corporations to be honest and sincere
|
| Mate, have I got bad news for you regarding literally the
| entirety of human commerce.
| sunshowers wrote:
| What kind of response is this? I'm aware that
| expectations don't often match reality. That is a reason
| to recommit to expectations, not to lower them.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I personally expect them to sell me a product that does
| what it says on the box, and Apple does that for me.
| sunshowers wrote:
| Well, my expectations are significantly higher than
| yours, and I believe I'm right to have them.
| rpdillon wrote:
| The post you're replying to meant that it boosts Apple
| Watch sales because they hobble the functionality of
| competitors. I think your statement is simply saying that
| any competitor is insecure. I'd be surprised if that were a
| widely held view.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Hobbling is a weird way to say that they aren't
| privileging unknown hardware. Yes, they make their own
| peripherals work better together. This seems like the
| only way to do some of what they do, airpods are so good
| because they use a proprietary standard that is better
| than bluetooth, using the open standard would be worse.
|
| My point is that it is good that they focus on making
| their own products work well together, it provides better
| value than being wide open and trying to work super well
| with everything. Windows tries to work well with any
| peripheral, and its a bad experience.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| _That 's not good enough._ If you're Apple, and you're
| worth 3 trillion dollars, you can both do security and
| behave in a way that isn't anti-competitive. They could
| interoperate securely. Is it easier to just lock out your
| competition and use proprietary everything? Yes, duh.
| It's also blatantly anti-competitive, which is a thing
| that societally and (arguably) morally is not acceptable.
|
| I hope to read this blog post in an antitrust case from
| the DOJ one day.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It isn't anti-competitive to not open up your hardware
| and software security stack to any other OEMs who wander
| by. You can simply just buy a competitor's product, for
| less money even.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean the results of the lawsuits are it kinda is. You
| don't have to open it up technologically in the sense
| that just anyone ole' device can just pair but you should
| have to give any OEM access that wants to be part of the
| secure hardware club-- they get to use the proprietary
| bits for interoperability.
|
| Any smart watch vendor should be able to call up Apple
| and make their own watch which is equally privileged to
| Apple's. And the requirements to the vendor to do so
| needs to be not so onerous as to be an effective ban.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Whether or not something is anti-competitive has nothing
| to do with how convenient it is for the incumbent. It may
| indeed by quite onerous for the incumbent. The bar for
| anti-competitive behavior is:
|
| - Is this stifling competition?
|
| - Is that harming consumers?
|
| Per the contents of the blog post, yes this is absolutely
| stifling competition given that Pebble won't be able to
| provide the same features/experience as the Apple watch.
| This directly hurts Pebble which prevents them from
| competing.
|
| As for how much that hurts consumers, the answer is not a
| clear "yes". The iOS market share is ~60% in the US and I
| don't think the majority of those folks wear or are
| interested in wearing any kind of watch, smart or not.
|
| However, if Apple keeps this up they're absolutely going
| to go the way of Ma Bell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un
| ited_States_v._AT%26T_(1982) and the eventual
| Telecommunication Act of 1996 which forced incumbent
| providers to interconnect with folks who would ostensibly
| be their competition.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Is this stifling competition?
|
| This is incredibly vaguely defined here. Saying that
| apple stifles smart watch competition by not actively
| working to make iphone more interoperable with non apple
| smart watches is ridiculous. You'd never say that a car
| company is stiffing competition by making it hard to
| install a new engine, or mount after market add-ons.
|
| People have such a confusing hate-boner for apple. Just
| buy an android phone.
| nytpu wrote:
| I recommend reading the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
| which required all incumbent telephone companies to allow
| any other company to install equipment in their central
| offices and buy rights to already laid phone lines at a
| fixed rate, where all the expense of actually building
| and laying everything laid entirely with the owner of the
| central office.
|
| Turns out that (fairly applied) antitrust doesn't care
| how much it money it costs an incumbent company to begin
| allowing competitors
| ch4s3 wrote:
| This is a goofy argument. Telephone lines are a natural
| monopoly, cell phones are not. I have no interest in a
| poorly secured grab bag of bullshit blue-tooth add-ons,
| and there's no government interest in enabling that.
| jorvi wrote:
| It literally is, which is why the EU took a crowbar to
| iOS its built-in limitations.
| shuckles wrote:
| If you're Apple and worth 3 trillion dollars then you can
| also ship a voice assistant that's competitive with the 5
| year old state of the art. It should be simple. Money can
| be turned into engineering results with absolutely no
| trade offs.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Something I learned a while ago is that there's a
| particular brand of very vocal person online who has a bone
| to pick with Apple. Sometimes it's for a good reason,
| sometimes less so, but the point is that they come to
| discussions of any Apple topic with a conclusion ready in
| hand and then work backwards from that. In this case the
| conclusion is, "Apple is wicked, perfidious, and
| monopolistic."
|
| Truthfully there isn't much you can say to people in that
| mindset.
| sunshowers wrote:
| I think trillion dollar companies should not exist. They
| are inherently destructive to humanity.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Case in point. If the topic was that, then I'd welcome
| the discussion, but when you simply bring that to every
| discussion about Apple... it gets old. After all your
| statement only really needs to be said once for people to
| understand it, which makes the repetition over the years
| very grating. "Single issue posters" are generally the
| least engaging on the internet.
| sunshowers wrote:
| I'm not a single-issue poster. I'm an established
| engineer with a large amount of public writing, much of
| which has been on the HN front page!
| worik wrote:
| Apple is a poster child for why there should be limits on
| the power of wealth
|
| Closing your mind to the possibility that Apple is
| throughly rotton is probably soothing, but the
| possibility remains that we are right, you are wrong, and
| each time the conclusion is the same, and correct
|
| Big Tech monopolies sniffle innovation and hord resources
| 9rx wrote:
| Apple and the like are only worth as much as they are
| because of intellectual property laws. Without that,
| you'd have a million iPhone clones (perfect copies, minus
| the dumb stuff) on the market a few days later and Apple
| would soon be worthless.
|
| Intellectual property laws is not some natural law of the
| universe. It only exists because the people (i.e. the
| general public) want it to exist. They could do away with
| it on a whim, but choose not to. Which isn't irrational
| as it may first seem. Their own careers probably rely on
| the status quo, and their retirement savings no doubt
| rest on companies like Apple being worth a fortune, so
| there is a lot of incentive to not rock the boat.
| worik wrote:
| IP laws are not all or nothing. It is possible to have
| property law that allows the good things (personal
| property, rewards for innovation) without the bad (market
| domination, monopoly and oligopoly)
|
| We have not tried, and it is not due to "we the people"
| it is due to "them our overlords"
| 9rx wrote:
| _> it is due to "them our overlords"_
|
| Funny enough, the state of intellectual property tends to
| be much more relaxed where overlords are actually found
| (e.g. China). It's easy when one guy can make things so.
| Far less easy when you have millions upon millions of
| people afraid that any change will impact them
| personally.
| commakozzi wrote:
| it's tiring isn't it?
| sunshowers wrote:
| _The fucking article_ is about this, so it 's very
| relevant.
| recursive wrote:
| Yes. Probably in approximately the same way I find that
| there's nothing you can say to Apple fans that find a way
| to justify anything the Apple does.
| avidiax wrote:
| "We should not discuss how much of a monopoly Apple is.
| It's impossible to convince some people that it's
| actually _not_ a monopoly. "
| dns_snek wrote:
| Interesting conclusion given that pro-Apple comments with
| provably incorrect claims routinely end up at the top of
| the HN's comment section, this thread included.
| Information directly refuting those claims often gets
| downvoted and suppressed. Why is that?
| guelo wrote:
| Aren't all you apple defenders with very similar opinions
| also "a particular brand of very vocal person online"?
| robenkleene wrote:
| I understand this could be confusing but it's actually
| super easy to understand:
|
| If you believe Apple has a unique approach that's
| valuable, then it makes sense to be a staunch defender,
| because if Apple were to change or go away, people who
| appreciate their approach would have no alternative.
|
| Whereas if you don't believe Apple's approach is
| valuable, it doesn't make any sense to critique them
| because you can just buy a product from any other company
| and go about your day. I.e., why are you even talking or
| thinking about this?
|
| Therefore it makes 100% sense for Apple fans to defend
| Apple, because they believe Apple is unique. Whereas
| Apple critics give off weird vibes of why are you so
| obsessed with this when just about every other company
| caters to your taste?
| avgDev wrote:
| As a customer I would like to be able to make that
| decision. I don't need apple to hold my hand. They could
| inform me in the app store or when I install the app. Here
| apple is making that decision for me.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Apple is obviously the vendor for people who like to have
| their hands held. If you don't like that, make your
| decision earlier, just don't buy Apple. Worked for me the
| last decade.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I'm happy for them to hold my hand on commodity
| electronics. I don't ever want to have to think about how
| my phone and headphones work. I like to fiddle with
| computers, but not the stuff I need to run my day to day
| life.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| 'If you don't like our business practices, don't buy from
| Standard Oil' type argument
| jmb99 wrote:
| > As a customer I would like to be able to make that
| decision.
|
| You can. There are dozens (hundreds?) of phones you can
| buy that aren't an iPhone. It's been well known for
| nearly 20 years at this point that iPhones are more
| closed than the competition (of which, again, there is a
| lot). They are successful _because_ of this, not in spite
| of it, contrary to internet belief.
| avgDev wrote:
| I know.
|
| However, apple devices have been just more reliable for
| me and retain better resale.
| pb7 wrote:
| Why do you think they are more reliable and have better
| resale value?
| tremon wrote:
| Your argumentation itself is nefarious, because you're
| implicitly equating third-party with insecure.
| wobfan wrote:
| That's the problem. Apple has two arguments. It obviously
| only tells us about the one that sounds good.
| gretch wrote:
| It's not a problem, it's a good thing that someone's
| financial interests intersect with sound security practices.
|
| That like saying "people want reliable cars" conveniently
| aligns with Toyota's interest and implying there's something
| wrong happening.
| sunshowers wrote:
| No, it's like saying that you can only buy Toyota
| aftermarket accessories at a steep markup, and other
| accessories are locked out via cryptography.
| richwater wrote:
| I'm glad Apple's financial interests are aligned to my
| interests of not letting the eco system turn into a shitty
| Android-esque privacy wild west.
| sunshowers wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for! Apple doesn't let you modify
| apps to remove tracking the way you can on Android.
| mistercheph wrote:
| So sick of this strawman dialectic from the apple-brained,
| where the alternative to the walled garden is the worst
| possible implementation of an open standard.
| culi wrote:
| Firefox is also frequently criticized for not implementing
| certain APIs because of security concerns. There was a post
| on this site just the other day about their lack of support
| for WebUSB for exactly this reason
|
| It's not unique to Apple. And we should take security
| seriously. To people who are technically literate and think
| they can navigate security risks it's not a big deal but
| people's entire lives are frequently turned upside down by
| scams and security loopholes
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| The main difference is that with Firefox no one can use the
| API. Apple seems to be happy to implement APIs... but only
| their own products can use them.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Like with headphones. Only AirPods and Beats (owned by
| Apple) headphones can use their proprietary extensions on
| top of Bluetooth for improved pairing or better headset-
| mode quality. Then they removed the jack to wipe out the
| rest.
| minkzilla wrote:
| It doesn't have to be the worst possible implementation to be
| less desirable than the walled garden for me. I get so much
| spam in whatsapp, groupMe, telegram, and from sms. Some of it
| is even from legitimate contacts but then they signed up for
| something or did something and it sends one of those stupid
| "join me on {thing}" messages. The only place I don't get
| spam is imessage
| mistercheph wrote:
| I get spam on iMessage, and you can continue to live in the
| walled garden, nobody wants to force you to buy a third
| party watch, they just want third party devices to have the
| same API access as the first party device.
| sockaddr wrote:
| It's not a straw man argument, it is _the_ argument.
|
| An average user can't dive into the bluetooth driver code and
| figure out where in the 4000 page spec something deviates and
| is now a security issue. So we have to assume the worst.
| mistercheph wrote:
| Having an open standard doesn't mean every implementer will
| do so in good faith and using best practices, the consumer
| still ultimately has to make a choice about which product
| they use, and can continue to use apple's solution if they
| trust in apple to securely implement the spec. The insane
| strawman you're proposing is that the choice is between a
| single blessed solution from Apple that's infallible, and a
| wild west where the only way for a consumer to be safe is
| to personally audit their device against a 4000 page
| specification document. Absurd! We use devices and software
| every day that implement open standards and while issues do
| arise in particular implementations, they do with no more
| frequency than issues are discovered in proprietary
| solutions and standards.
|
| Go look at the CVE's for iMessage, plurality of RCE's on
| apple devices in the last decade is Apple's iMessage
| implementation, and it's their own protocol! And almost all
| of the rest are apple's implementation of the open web
| standards!
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse
| accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change
| in the security boundary
|
| Is it? My iPhone replicates messages to my mac from where a
| process can extract that data, it can capture the screen etc. I
| can use a mac today to set up a relay that would then send
| those messages to a smart watch if one would do that.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Same with Phone Link on Windows.
| judofyr wrote:
| Yes? Imagine a bug where iMessages are leaked over Bluetooth
| when a user has installed an application that integrates with
| some watch brand. Bring this to an airport and you can steal
| hundreds/thousands of messages from a wide range of people.
| That's widely different attack vector than targeting macOS.
|
| That said, I don't see why Apple can't provide
| toolkit/certification that will make it safe to communicate
| over Bluetooth. They already have it in-place for Apple
| Watch.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Bluetooth is encrypted.
| Avamander wrote:
| Should be, but BT stacks are super crap and it's hard to
| truly guarantee that. Pretty sure they do not currently
| require the highest (actually proper) security level from
| everyone.
| refulgentis wrote:
| This whole thread is chockful of thought-terminating
| cliches, and I say that as someone who grew from a waiter
| to a developer thanks to Apple and made a lot of these
| arguments.
|
| I also worked on Android Wear's iOS app for working with
| iPhones.
|
| The major problem I see now with these excuses, that I'd
| like to claim wasn't an issue when I was making them
| circa 2015-2017, is they're cargo cult (a la Apple likes
| making things that just work) or boogeymen (if they did
| anything different, a bluetooth connection would be used,
| unencrypted, sending all your data into the ether).
|
| The watch has been out for 10 years.
|
| Software is software. Where there's a will, there's a
| way.
|
| It's very, very, very, hard to believe there's 0 way for
| Apple to ensure an encrypted connection.
|
| Put another way, avoiding the global observations: If
| it's impossible, why allow watches to be paired at all?
| Avamander wrote:
| > that I'd like to claim wasn't an issue when I was
| making them circa 2015-2017,
|
| Well, I wouldn't say that the standards for (software)
| security were anywhere near as high as they are now. It
| makes sense that our requirements for things change.
|
| > It's very, very, very, hard to believe there's 0 way
| for Apple to ensure an encrypted connection.
|
| Sure there are ways, but without regulation I struggle to
| see why should/would Apple ever bother. Nor do I think
| that a forced way would be held to the same standards as
| the rest.
|
| > Put another way, avoiding the global observations: If
| it's impossible, why allow watches to be paired at all?
|
| Because they can't do much, if anything at all?
| polyaniline wrote:
| Sorry for going out of subject but I had to ask - how did
| Apple take you from waiter to developer?
| refulgentis wrote:
| _extreme handwaving_ hand-me-down 6 year old iBook(?)
| circa 2005 = > wow software can be beautiful => hacking
| on AppleScript => hacking on iPhone OS 1.1.4 decompiled
| SDK => iPhone 2 with the App Store(tm) => shit, I can
| make money off this? => dropout => startup => sold it =>
| saw what an acquisition looks like => by the grace of god
| herself, somehow made it through Google interviews.
|
| (happy to detail more, like everyone, I love talking
| about myself :P but figured I'd start with the TL;DR,
| i.e. the App Store + subsequent boom happened at such a
| time that made it seems reasonable, years later, to
| dropout, and having 0 responsibility outside restaurant
| shifts gave me a fulcrum)
| nijave wrote:
| Given that Apple controls the entire hardware and
| software stack, can't they guarantee messages are
| encrypted and refuse to send them if they aren't?
|
| It seems like they're refusing unconditionally and
| claiming security instead of actually requiring security.
| rezonant wrote:
| So _Apple 's_ BT stack is crap? Because that's the one
| that is in control here...
| eddieroger wrote:
| I agree with you, but your iPhone forwards SMS messages, but
| not iMessages, and there's a trust relationship between the
| devices through Keychain. Still, doing it blindly over BLE is
| a scary proposition.
| maximusdrex wrote:
| I truly don't understand how these types of comments keep
| appearing under any discussion of apple's blatantly anti-
| competitive behavior with messages. This doesn't even make
| sense on technical grounds; it would be trivial to require such
| message passing to be encrypted/signed securely if that's your
| real concern. After all, the Apple Watch does exist and does
| have these capabilities, so it's clearly possible to do it and
| maintain the "security boundaries" you're so concerned with.
| Then every single one of these comments inevitably turn towards
| spam messages which no longer even makes sense since iMessage
| has been filled with spam lately. I really don't see how
| allowing smartwatch manufacturers to also interface with
| iMessage (in the same way Apple Watches do) will inevitably
| increase spam on the platform which can't be detected/mitigated
| in other ways. I'd love to see some technically rigorous
| explanation for why apple can't support any third-party
| anything instead of hand wringing about "security" with no real
| explanation but I have a feeling I'll be waiting a long time.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> I truly don't understand how these types of comments keep
| appearing under any discussion of apple's blatantly anti-
| competitive behavior with messages._
|
| Fanboyism and blinded by brand loyalty.
| snailmailman wrote:
| It's not just the transmission over Bluetooth. It's the
| entirety of what happens with the message. Apple fully
| controls and trusts the code that's running on the apple
| watch. But they have no control over what third parties do
| with all the data they can collect in notifications.
|
| Bluetooth devices on iOS that display notifications _already_
| are getting more information than normal by simply even
| _reading_ all notifications. Normal apps on iOS can't do
| that, they have no reason to. This api was added because
| smart watches kinda need that functionality to be useful. I
| think it's still locked behind a "this device will see _all_
| your stuff" permissions box.
|
| I do think they should add in more iMessage/sms/replying
| capabilities to smart watches though. I think they are
| extremely hesitant to make it even easier to automate
| iMessages. iMessage spam is definitely increasing, but it's
| NOT as prevalent as normal sms spam for instance. The
| barriers are much higher, and Apple can basically blacklist
| devices/appleIDs that send out too much spam, partly because
| they've kept iMessage so locked down.
| maximusdrex wrote:
| Again there is no technical rigor behind these notions.
| Video providers didn't like the idea of untrusted HDMI
| devices scraping video from DRM protected content so they
| came up with HDCP, which allows anyone to develop and
| certify solutions as trusted software/hardware. There's no
| reason apple can't do something similar, it doesn't have to
| be completely open vs. completely closed. There are always
| alternative solutions to the problems that people think
| apple's walled garden approach is solving; which makes it
| clear what the real purpose is.
| dns_snek wrote:
| > One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is
| that the ecosystem is closed, and makes automation difficult
|
| Really? I'm not in the Apple ecosystem to confirm but it looks
| trivial to me, and you can always fall back to keyboard/mouse
| input type of automation.
|
| https://airmessage.org/
|
| https://bluebubbles.app/
|
| https://medium.com/@jameskabbes/sending-imessages-with-pytho...
| jmb99 wrote:
| Some anecdata. I get a few dozen spam SMSs in any given
| month, as well as some spam phone calls (varies a lot by
| month - sometimes only 1-2, sometimes 20+). I have received a
| total of 2 spam iMessages (I remember them because they're
| notable to exist), and 0 spam FaceTime audio calls, and I've
| had this phone number associated with iMessage since it was
| first released.
|
| Regardless of the reason, there is substantially (many orders
| of magnitude) less spam on Apple's networks, at least for me,
| when compared to SMS/RCS/telephony.
| dns_snek wrote:
| I'm not debating the amount of spam but rather GP's claim
| that iMessage is hard to automate.
|
| I showed that iMessage is trivial to automate and since you
| both claim that the amount of spam on the platform is very
| low, we can conclude that ease of automation isn't an
| important factor when it comes to iMessage spam.
|
| Unless someone decides to move the goalposts we should
| therefore be in full agreement that Pebble being allowed to
| integrate with iMessage wouldn't have any appreciable
| effect on the amount of spam in the network.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Apple is fine with any customer retention benefits from
| security and I don't agree (with the article author) that they
| are merely pretending their strategy is primarily focused on
| security
| chamanbuga wrote:
| This is cap. I worked on heads up glasses, and one of our
| issues was the lack of integration with Apple's iMessage
| ecosystem. Device makers are willing to go through several
| security measures, like deploying the MFi chips and
| certification. However, at best this gives you access to the
| notification system, not iMessage itself. You are able to
| respond to messages via the notification framework, but not
| integrate directly with iMessage even after taking all security
| and certification efforts. This isn't a security play. This is
| a walled garden play.
| mceachen wrote:
| s/cap/crap/?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Or they mean cap as 'lie' in genz speak. 'No cap' = 'No
| lie'. in a sentence "I saw an alligator today. No cap"
| mceachen wrote:
| Thanks for translating. I've never heard cap used in the
| affirmative.
| daedrdev wrote:
| It's often used to call people out. That's cap = that's
| bullshit
| rapind wrote:
| No cap, I did see an alligator two days ago on the golf
| course. There were a lot of abandoned balls around her
| (water trap).
| rambambram wrote:
| Gen Z speak? I thought it was 'hood speak' or something.
| Like: I'm going to cap your sorry ass. I'm not a native
| English speaker, so what do I know.
| IshKebab wrote:
| That's a different old meaning of cap. Modern meaning is
| "lie".
| rambambram wrote:
| Thanks!
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| both have roots in urban culture. but busting a cap in
| someone means cap like cap-gun, aka gun, aka shooting
| someone.
|
| cap in the true/lie sense also has roots there, but more
| in a superlative sense and not guns
| frankvdwaal wrote:
| A lot of slang comes from street language, so that
| thought may still be right. :)
|
| It's a decades old word that used to mean trying to one
| up someone with tough talk, exaggerating, topping
| someone. That talk would be so high above the others, it
| would be the cap on top.
|
| Now to have a good story, to have that cap, people could
| be... flexible with the truth, so eventually, over the
| years, to cap started to mean that you were telling a
| tall tale, a lie.
| rambambram wrote:
| Thanks, now I also know where the word comes from.
| internetter wrote:
| cap (noun, verb, slang)
|
| (n.) A falsehood, exaggeration, or lie. "Saying you climbed
| a V10 after a month? That's cap."
|
| (v.) To lie, exaggerate, or be deceitful. "He said he coded
| the whole app in a day, but we know he capping."
| Retric wrote:
| Every device you let in is another attack surface, and no
| certification process can eliminate it.
|
| Allowing devices to view and respond to messages is
| inherently lower risk than allowing them to freely
| communicate with anyone.
| AndrewHart wrote:
| You could say the same about software and app stores. If
| safety were the top priority, then the safest option is to
| say no apps, but that isn't competitive or lucrative.
| Apple's approach is to create safe frameworks and a review
| process that allows the App Store to exist.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| They're likely to be regulated into allowing third party
| app stores with review processes that they don't control.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| What third party apps can see notifications and send via
| iMessage?
| tapland wrote:
| You could argue for only allowing communication through
| selected carriers, or connections to selected brand
| computers, and connecting to selected manufacturer Wi-Fi
| hotspots too
| tremon wrote:
| You do realize this is a very infantilizing attitude? Why
| can't the end user choose its own level of security vs
| usability? Letting a corporation decide this for all users
| is just creating a nanny state in different clothing.
| Zak wrote:
| While I agree with you (I daily a rooted Android phone),
| anyone who cleaned up a few Windows machines for non-
| technical people 20 years ago probably at least
| understands where Apple is coming from. The average
| person is really bad at system administration, and it
| doesn't take many bad actors creating malware and scams
| to have a big impact.
| sbarre wrote:
| I tend to agree with this, but if you look at the PC
| ecosystem, you'll see that 'leave users to figure out
| their own security' is a shit show.
|
| Phones, for better or worse, contain much more private
| and personal information about users than their computer
| I would bet on average.
|
| So I understand the urge to make phones more secure by
| default and to help users avoid foot guns, even if it
| means restricting their choices.
|
| You are likely not the average user, and I think it's a
| bit selfish to demand total freedom, that you can manage
| safely, when for most users they would be worse off.
|
| In a perfect world we wouldn't need this but we certainly
| don't have one of those.
| Zak wrote:
| > _I understand the urge to make phones more secure by
| default and to help users avoid foot guns_
|
| There's secure by default, and then there's stuff users
| can't override even with great effort. Android restricts
| some dangerous operations by default and makes users jump
| through a couple hoops to acknowledge the risk. iOS
| usually forbids them entirely.
| sbarre wrote:
| Yep agreed that this would be a better approach. I think
| this is where iOS uses security as an excuse to maintain
| their walled garden.
| izacus wrote:
| Without that "shit show" you would never end up with
| devices like iPhones and useful software that drove last
| decades of innovation and progress.
|
| The ability to build better things is the reason why you
| can now sit here, using technologies built on that "shit
| show" machine, and bloviate how new generations aren't
| allowed to build new things anymore because a megacorp
| needs to feed its greed.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| It doesn't follow that the past had to be a shit show for
| the future to not be a shit show.
|
| In any case we are largely still learning when it comes
| to security and I don't really want to make things less
| secure for the many just to satisfy the few.
| pb7 wrote:
| Why can't people choose which prescription drugs they
| want to use?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| They should be able to.
| int_19h wrote:
| That would be a good way to reduce the efficiency of the
| remaining antibiotics very quickly.
|
| (But also, this kind of thing is exactly why the analogy
| doesn't even make sense.)
| inopinatus wrote:
| They should not, because the adverse consequences are not
| limited to the individual.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| The teeming masses of iOS users are, in general, morons,
| and should absolutely be infantalized when it comes to
| their device security
| miki123211 wrote:
| Because with iMessage, it's not about your own security,
| it's about the security of everybody that you're allowed
| to message from a given device.
|
| I suspect Apple can significantly cut down on abuse
| prevention measures just by making it harder to
| _automatically_ send iMessage spam.
|
| If any random Bluetooth smartwatch was allowed to send
| those, there's no telling how that capability could be
| abused, we all know how IoT vendors are with device
| security.
| mistercheph wrote:
| > we all know how IoT vendors are with device security.
|
| Couldn't agree more: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord/Search
| Results?query=apple+watc...
| cyberax wrote:
| > Because with iMessage, it's not about your own
| security, it's about the security of everybody that
| you're allowed to message from a given device.
|
| You do realize that you're implying that Apple is
| insecure by design? Because I can easily (locally) root
| my iPhone and get raw access to iMessage.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| *This is false.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| What are the limitations of integrating via notifications?
| That seems like the user-respecting method. For example, I
| don't use iMessage or SMS, but WhatsApp.
| criddell wrote:
| I'm just guessing, but _notification_ suggests you could
| respond to an incoming message but maybe you can 't
| initiate an outgoing message?
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| May I suggest using proper English? I believe part of the
| reason you are getting downvoted is due to the hat language
| you are using. Several people, understandably, will not
| comprehend.
| lynx97 wrote:
| As a user, I am totally fine with Apple restricting access to
| iMessage. In fact, now that I read this, I _want_ them to do
| this, thanks Apple.
| bigyabai wrote:
| You can thank Apple for the Lightning connector and App
| Store too, for all the good it does everyone in the EU. If
| a company uses their power to prevent competition with
| their own products or services, the market's jurisdiction
| reserves the right to restore competition to their market
| and prevent the harms inherent to monopoly abuse.
| lynx97 wrote:
| I probably dont get your sarcasm. But I never had a
| problem with Lightning. In the long run, I like the
| switch to USB-C... But when I got my first iPhone, USB-C
| wasn't invented yet, so... Also, I like the AppStore for
| its reviews, and would actually _NEVER_ activate an
| alternative appstore. No need to weaken my security on
| purpose. I know, its apparently an unpopular opinion
| here, but that is mostly because many people only comment
| with their dev hats on and are apparently unable to see
| things from user perspectives...
| rahkiin wrote:
| To add: when apple switched to lightning they made a deal
| with hardware makers that they would support this for 10
| years in order not to make all their hardware obsolete
| again. They did eventually change it after exactly 10
| years.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Not because their software would inherently break by
| switching to a different USB connector, or even by using
| a converter dongle. Apple signed this agreement because
| Lightning had a hardcoded DRM protocol baked into it to
| force third-parties to pay licensing fees. Of course they
| demanded a 10 year support window, it was a licensing
| ruse to make manufacturers pay a price premium to use the
| USB featureset.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program
| rahkiin wrote:
| Not everything has to be a 'i win, you lose'. It can be a
| strategy and architecture where multiple parties get
| something out of it. In different ways.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Sure, FireWire is an example of Apple using innovation to
| actually innovate. Lightning is an example of Apple using
| DRM to paywall an ordinary and freely availible USB 2.0
| featureset.
| majormajor wrote:
| Firewire was a speed/feature innovation. Lighting was a
| port innovation. Pay to play in either case.
|
| Other options available to Apple instead of Lightning:
|
| * stick with the iPod connector for longer
|
| * switch to micro-USB
|
| * never invent the iPod connector in favor of staying
| with Firewire or going to mini-USB and then switch to
| micro-USB or something else later anyway
|
| None of these are better. I'm EXTREMELY glad they didn't
| switch to micro-USB. I had no shortage of mini-USB and
| then micro-USB devices and the micro-USB ports/cables are
| pretty much the worst I've ever dealt with.
| SllX wrote:
| The open alternative to 30-pin when Lightning was
| introduced was micro-USB and micro-USB is ass, but not
| switching away from 30-pin wasn't an option for the phone
| they wanted to build at the time, that being the iPhone
| 5.
|
| All in all, Lightning was a net benefit that overstayed
| its welcome by a few years. Even once USB-C was
| introduced a few years later, it took a few more years
| than that to become as pervasive as it did.
| mistercheph wrote:
| You never needed speeds in excess of usb 2.0? LOL, this
| is such old hat, guys in IBM t-shirts telling me how
| nobody ever needed more than 64K, and why go third party
| with your treasured computation when you can get the
| best, the infallible, the _International_ Business
| Machine?
| ImJamal wrote:
| Apple is choosing to limit USB C to USB 2 speeds to
| encourage people pay for a more expensive model. The
| iPhone 16 pro max has USB 3 speeds after all...
| fingerlocks wrote:
| No, it just shipped with a slower cable. You get high
| speed transfer with a thunderbolt cable
| lynx97 wrote:
| In the 15 years that I use iPhones now, I never needed
| the USB port for any data transfer except for one time
| when I used an external sound card to record things.
| Maybe I am a simpleton when it comes to mobile. I guess I
| deserve being LOLed at.
| tpholland wrote:
| Don't worry, that one has the energy of <i>the guy that
| was fired for buying IBM</i>
| bigyabai wrote:
| > No need to weaken my security on purpose.
|
| You're using an iPhone, buddy. If NSO Group gets a chip
| on their shoulder, they can install a persistent backdoor
| on your phone by sending you a text message. Your
| security is nonexistent unless you disable iMessage and
| JS in Safari, even then Uncle Sam has Five Eyes watching
| your every move for any traces of "terrorist" support.
|
| I'm not worried about the programs I install on F-Droid.
| I'm worried about the competitive harm being forced onto
| the iPhone community by protecting Apple from righteous
| competition and forcing their services as a de-facto
| monopoly. I'm worried about the security consequences of
| iCloud being backdoored in soverign countries, and the
| users who don't have honestly secure options because of
| sycophants with a superiority complex.
| lynx97 wrote:
| We are not buddies. And I am not confused enough to
| believe NSO Group would be interested in me. This is
| plain paranoia you are using to try to win an argument.
| Calm down. Besides, where is the competitive harm if you
| are so happy with your Android? Look, I am happy with
| Apple doing some basic things to make the device
| relatively safe. I know nothing is absolutely safe. And
| again, I am not high profile, and I am also not paranoid.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| > ... security firm gets a chip on their shoulder, they
| can install a persistent backdoor on your phone...
|
| But a random developer can't exfiltrate my data, which is
| the WAY WAY more common scenario that the previous poster
| was worried about.
|
| I agree with them. The Apple App Store prevents a lot
| more malware than the ability to install ANY software. I
| like the Mac App Store as well, its a large library of
| software that is virtually guaranteed to be safe from
| infecting your computer with a virus.
|
| Now, I know how to sideload onto my iPhone, I have
| homebrew on my MBP, but my brother/sister doesn't, my
| aunt can't, my uncle assumed his phone was facebook, and
| they are safer (from viruses) for it. Make installing
| viruses harder!
|
| I spent decades as the de facto IT person in my family,
| and when iPhone and Android came around, family members
| started buying MacBooks, my load got lightened a LOT.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Well, Apple will have to redesign their security model,
| then. If the iPhone relies on Apple's white-glove
| curation to stay secure, then European users are enough
| of a reason to overhaul their security model.
|
| It's great that you know how to sideload, I'm not saying
| everyone has to know how. I'm arguing that the option
| should exist regardless of if you pay for a $99/year
| subscription fee. It should be a part of owning the
| hardware you paid for and purchasing the right to control
| it as the user.
| rangestransform wrote:
| no matter what, curation will be another layer of cheese
| in the swiss cheese model of defects
| bboygravity wrote:
| You can't run an ad-blocker and you browse the web with
| JS turned on in Safari, but your Iphone is secure?
|
| yeah ok
| lynx97 wrote:
| I don't need an ad-blocker. I have YouTube Premium. And I
| really don't need Safari that often, actually. Besides,
| if we're really talking JS==insecure, 99% of users on
| desktop _and_ mobile are insecure. I am sort of on your
| side, because I spend most of my web-time in Lynx in a
| tmux. But if _I_ were to argue against JS, people would
| call me a weirdo. That war is over. I fought it until
| 2010.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > I don't need an ad-blocker. I have YouTube Premium
|
| Most people usually don't brag about supporting two
| monopolies at the same time. I admire your American
| spirit!
| lynx97 wrote:
| Can you please stop verbally spitting at me?
|
| I am not an American. I just have a different opinion on
| some things then you. Ever tried some empathy?
|
| Pragmatically speaking, I prefer YouTube Premium because
| I hate their inability to filter out scammy ads, and I
| still feel like supporting creators at least a bit. As a
| customer, its not always my call how much of my money
| goes to creators. Thats why I refuse to use Apple Music
| and/or Spotify. I spend my money on BandCamp, which I
| consider an appropriate compensation for other "sins" I
| might commit on the net.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| How does people having the ability to activate
| alternative app stores on their phones affect you? Or
| have a Pebble with similar functionality to an Apple
| Watch? Just don't activate the App Store or purchase a
| Pebble and stay in your walled garden.
|
| We're lucky our computers aren't walled gardens because
| if Apple knew it would work this well with iOS, MacOS
| would be the same.
| vv_ wrote:
| What's wrong with paying for YouTube Premium to not have
| any ads?
| maest wrote:
| > I don't need an ad-blocker. I have YouTube Premium.
|
| This cannot be your actual stance.
|
| You know there is a lot more to the Internet than that
| one website, right?
| lynx97 wrote:
| I already said I dont use Safari that much. If you hadn't
| shortened the quote your reply would be moot. Maybe I
| need to rephrase, to make you happy: I don't use the web
| so much on my iPhone. The primary ad-offender in my world
| is YouTube, which I fixed by paying for Premium.
| hu3 wrote:
| > And I really don't need Safari that often, actually.
|
| Yeah you're an exception.
|
| Thankfully people like you don't get to decide what EU
| rules as best for people.
| biot wrote:
| You can run ad blockers in mobile Safari. This one works
| great: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-
| privacy-browser/... -- it's both a browser itself as well
| as acting as a content blocker for Safari and does a
| fantastic job at blocking ads.
| ericmay wrote:
| > You can thank Apple for the Lightning connector
|
| They did move to USB-C, but the lightning connector was
| actually a great product, far superior in usability to
| the Micro-USB, Mini-USB, and whatever other nonsense
| standards that existed. When Apple wanted to move to
| USB-C people complained about them "changing standards
| all the time". There really isn't a move that pleases
| everyone and even when they do the "right" thing people
| still complain lol.
|
| > App Store too, for all the good it does everyone in the
| EU
|
| The Apple App Store is pretty great. There's a large,
| vocal minority of folks that want changes there, but they
| also aren't the ones that have to deal with grandma and
| grandpa doing crazy stuff. If you want another App Store
| just by an Android phone since that's a feature they
| offer. Kind of like if I wanted a phone with a larger
| megapixel camera or something I'd buy something else.
| bigyabai wrote:
| I've heard it all before, both of these are simple to
| refute. Apple _designed_ the USB-C connector, they knew
| it was an option. But as is Apple tradition, they created
| a new licensed serial and power connector specifically
| for their phones to promote MFi, their arbitrary USB DRM.
| Apple could have switched to USB-C at any time; they had
| no issue shipping millions of peripherals and Macs with
| them onboard. But they didn 't, because then they
| couldn't foist a proprietary standard onto their most
| lucrative submarket.
|
| > If you want another App Store just by an Android phone
| since that's a feature they offer.
|
| Sorry, this is bullshit. Alternative sources for
| installing software will always exist, even current
| iPhone users have to accept Cydia as an option. You don't
| ever have to leave the Apple App Store, but your
| preference has no right to enforce an artificial
| limitation onto other users. The Mac as a product would
| not exist without third-party software distribution, the
| iPhone is undeniably stifled by Apple's stance on the
| matter.
| riatin wrote:
| > You don't ever have to leave the Apple App Store, but
| your preference has no right to enforce an artificial
| limitation onto other users.
|
| So... just buy an Android? This is not an artificial
| limitation, it's an express preference that the vast
| majority of iOS users have voted for.
|
| > The Mac as a product would not exist without third-
| party software distribution
|
| The Mac is a completely different product servicing a
| completely different set of needs. Nobody is asking for
| the iPhone to be able to run Node or Vim so they can do
| their work, they want to scroll Instagram and reply to
| their iMessage
| mrlambchop wrote:
| Lightning development started in 2008 as I was there!
|
| USB-C development started in 2012 (I was not there!), but
| from wiki, the ever helpful source of truth: "The design
| for the USB-C connector was initially developed in 2012
| by Intel, HP Inc., Microsoft, and the USB Implementers
| Forum. The Type-C Specification 1.0 was published by the
| USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) on August 11, 2014.[1] In
| July 2016, it was adopted by the IEC as "IEC
| 62680-1-3".[3]"
|
| I not sure of the logic here, but Lightning solved a
| problem way before USB-C existed and I'm sure, led to
| support of USB-C standards such as reversible connectors
| etc...
| jahewson wrote:
| Apple did not design the USB-C connector, Intel did.
| duped wrote:
| > You can thank Apple for the Lightning connector
|
| Thanks Apple, for switching connectors on your mobile
| devices once in 25 years and enforcing standards on 3p
| peripheral and cable manufacturers, until a government
| forced you to change making me throw all my cables away.
| kulahan wrote:
| Walled gardens are not inherently bad. I DO thank Apple
| for the App Store. It's half the reason I have an iPhone.
| I WANT to be able to download any stupid thing in there
| without a care in the world re: viruses or other damaging
| experiences.
|
| This is not to say every aspect of their walled garden is
| good, but I'm more than happy to accept those problems in
| light of the benefits I personally value.
|
| This is all to say: it's not much of an argument to point
| out that _one of their selling points_ is an aspect of
| their ecosystem! I don't think you'll get through to
| anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
| sneak wrote:
| > _I WANT to be able to download any stupid thing in
| there without a care in the world re: viruses or other
| damaging experiences._
|
| The Apple ios app store is positively chock full of
| spyware. You can't download apps without a care in the
| world. This is why Apple put a privacy label on the apps
| (which is still woefully inadequate; it is self-
| reported).
| mwinatschek wrote:
| I'm with you on this one. I'd be fine with Apple opening up
| their ecosystem in a safe and careful way to other
| companies but only if the security stays, at least, at the
| same level - and if I'm able to turn off these options in
| the settings.
| bigiain wrote:
| Yep. Same.
|
| I do not want 3rd party hardware/software vendors to have
| unrestricted access to the messaging app on my phone that
| is the only option my bank and PayPal and a bunch of other
| critical services use for 2FA.
|
| Especially not when the software they want to run is
| JavaScript, with all it's well known npm dependancy
| nightmares, _and_ from a founder and team that openly admit
| iPhones are a second class citizen in their development
| planning and resources.
|
| And especially especially not when the founders have
| previously shown their colors when they rugpulled all their
| customers and effectively bricked all the devices they'd
| sold.
|
| Even with the limited iMessage/SMS access they have now, I
| wonder how long it'll be before we see a supply chain
| attack against Pebble exploiting some 11th level deep npm
| dependancy on something dumb like leftpad.js, that
| exfiltrates SMS 2FA codes and first anybody knows about it
| will be when a bunch of CryptoBros start complaining about
| their exchange accounts being emptied...
| burnte wrote:
| As another user, I don't want you making that decision for
| me.
| alex1115alex wrote:
| Preach. My team's building an OS for smart glasses and some
| of our most common feature requests are iOS notifications &
| being able to reply to them.
|
| We're going to have to do insane things to get them working.
| Due to how ANCS works, we're considering developing an ANCS
| "doohicky" (either a BLE pop-socket, smart-ring, or mag-safe
| wallet) which gets notifications via BLE & relays them back
| to the iPhone, to then send to the glasses. That would just
| get us the raw notifications, though, and wouldn't solve the
| issue of replying. The other option is a Beeper-like system
| in the cloud to bypass iOS entirely, but that also has
| downsides.
|
| It's a total mess, especially compared to Android where you
| can just easily listen for notifications & send them to the
| glasses without much pushback from the system.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| The attack vector is a 3pt app being compromised -
| maliciously or otherwise - that logs/collects the messages -
| i.e, the apps themselves can be a threat vector. To be blunt
| and honest, I'm not sure I disagree. The notification
| framework seems like an okay compromise to me. I have used it
| with my Garmin bike computer and I'm more than happy with the
| level of integration.
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| Might be a little bit of both but nothing you said there
| contradicts the original point--opening up iMessage
| integration to arbitrary bluetooth connections is a bad idea.
| It blows open access to all your messages...who knows, maybe
| even the e2ee keys. Law enforcement would have a brand new
| frictionless way into all your messages
| shuckles wrote:
| And what happens when the MFi chip is cracked, as it has been
| before, and Apple has to choose between permanently
| compromising their ecosystem or disabling support for a bunch
| of 3rd party peripherals?
| stemlord wrote:
| And I'll be the contra to your take: the iMessage ecosystem is
| so closed that everyone without iphones can barely even
| interact via sms with iphone users. This is overall such a huge
| problem that it makes the closed ecosystem security solution
| not a practical solution
| nashashmi wrote:
| my Chinese smartwatch can get imessages. It can't send
| messages, but it can use the AI voice (SIRI) to send messages.
| It can't delete messages either.
|
| PebbleOS is asking for the ability to respond to messages with
| reply or user interactions. This is not a security breach. And
| it won't leak from encryption anymore than it is leaking now.
| stefan_ wrote:
| I think you just don't understand the point. I don't care for
| choosing between 15 different brands making differently colored
| RAM either when it's all the same standardized thing, but you
| bet we're in a lot of trouble when _it 's only one brand at
| all_. Competition isn't always "technically pure" and "elegant"
| or meaningful.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Step 1: Have the iPhone pop up saying "do you want <Pebble
| watch> to be able to send messages?" and let the user decide
| which devices can send their phone messages.
|
| Step 2: Have the iPhone pop up saying "do you want <Apple
| watch> to be able to send messages?" and don't just assume
| "yes"
|
| Both steps would _improve_ security, even if they _harm_ Apple
| 's profits.
| spiderice wrote:
| How would step 1 improve security over not allowing third
| party devices to send messages at all?
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Why let users send messages in the first place? Tell me how
| you can get any more secure than that.
| SR2Z wrote:
| If Apple had their way, they would LOVE to sell you a
| $2000 aluminum brick with no screen, speakers,
| microphone, etc., that still required a proprietary cable
| to charge.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| Now come on, that's not fair. The apple pro display stand
| is an inert piece of metal with a hinge and some springs
| and it only costs $999.
| amiga386 wrote:
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX572ZM/A/apple-mac-
| pro-w...
|
| A set of four castors. Like the bottom of a shopping
| trolley. Yours for $699
|
| Tell your friends! "Each castor costs one hundred and
| seventy five dollars. It costs four hundred thousand
| dollars to run this computer... _for twelve seconds_. Ah
| ha ha ha ha ha ha! " (https://youtu.be/jHgZh4GV9G0?t=19)
| jm4 wrote:
| Why would you charge an aluminum brick?
| consteval wrote:
| For the thrill
| VibrantClarity wrote:
| because the charger is sold separately
| ada1981 wrote:
| Because it refused to become the 51st state.
| ada1981 wrote:
| I love my occasional comments that get downvotes.
|
| Helps me know I'm alive and not a cog.
| BetaDeltaAlpha wrote:
| Humane Pin still does this.
| threeseed wrote:
| We have decades of experience that users will blindly click
| whatever prompts they need to make the app work.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Ah, but you see, they need to go to the Apple store and buy
| an Apple product, then with no clicking at all the app will
| work.
|
| If they go to a different store, and buy a non-Apple
| product, that's insecure. What they need to do is return it
| and go to the Apple store and buy an Apple product. That's
| secure. Give the money to Apple.
| simion314 wrote:
| >We have decades of experience that users will blindly
| click whatever prompts they need to make the app work.
|
| Really, how is Apple protecting you from clicking Allow on
| a webbrowser if it asks permissions for WebCam and
| Microphone? I am asking since I do not have a Mac and
| really want to know how well are Apple users protected
| compared to Linxu users from web and microphone on
| browsers.
| rezonant wrote:
| That's exactly how it works. Apple does the same thing
| everyone else does. But when Apple does it, it's
| "secure", and when everyone else does it, it's
| "insecure". Hope that helps.
| Zak wrote:
| Android handles a couple permissions it doesn't want people
| turning on accidentally by requiring that the user open the
| settings app and manually pick which apps to allow from a
| list. I wonder if that reduces the rate of people enabling
| things unwisely.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I absolutely hate these sorts of nagging popups and I'm happy
| that a vendor I already have to trust doesn't pop them up
| when I acquire a new product and sign it into my Apple
| account.
|
| Imo, if this were to happen, it should happen by allowing
| devices like the pebble watch to sign into an Apple account
| and acquire permissions through that process rather than
| nagging on my phone on pairing.
| dns_snek wrote:
| What are you proposing exactly? What can be simpler than a
| single Yes/No prompt?
| recursive wrote:
| No prompts. No interoperability with non-Apple products
| or services. Maximum security. Minimum interaction with
| unwashed masses.
| modeless wrote:
| Apple makes a mockery of their own "security promises" for
| iMessage by not end-to-end encrypting iMessages in iCloud by
| default. Ridiculous to use that as a justification to prevent
| users from choosing to send their messages to watches that
| happen to be made by someone other than Apple.
| conradev wrote:
| Bluetooth devices can already read Messages from your iPhone
| with no degradation to E2EE:
| https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...
|
| This is just about sending.
| glitchc wrote:
| What is the problem here that a standardized cryptographic
| algorithm would not solve?
|
| I can understand if media poses concerns, but inbound and
| output text consisting entirely of UTF-8 characters?
| queuebert wrote:
| And yet haven't iMessage 0days been used to track and kill
| people? Even without opening the message?
| frollogaston wrote:
| The only hard part of automating either iMessage or SMS spam is
| getting a clean account to spam with. The input source is easy.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| > One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is
| that the ecosystem is closed, and makes automation difficult.
|
| Is this really true? I receive a lot of iMessage (not SMS) spam
| on iOS devices too. In fact for me I see more spam purely on
| iMessage than SMS. It wasn't like that in the past, but my
| point is even closed systems can be abused.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Does Apple not support that sort of integration already? What
| happens when your phone is connected to a car and you get a
| message?
| Osiris wrote:
| I get plenty of spam texts on iMessage. Can you elaborate on
| what you mean by "cesspit"?
| mid-kid wrote:
| Yet another example of security without consideration for user
| experience and freedom. Information security is a careful
| balance between not using technology at all and getting things
| done using technology. Sometimes you have to wonder if heavy-
| handed solutions like this actually helps maintain this balance
| for users, or just serves to ensure a company's bottom line.
|
| This is the line of reasoning that has resulted in me being
| unable to sign up with a shocking amount of house rental
| companies, thanks to Play Integrity on the android side of the
| coin. Does it improve security for me? I would argue it
| doesn't, as it would force me to use unpatched versions of
| Android. If it's not serving the user, who is it for?
| tomrod wrote:
| If AppleWatch didn't exist, this critique and reasoning would
| have legs.
| Jyaif wrote:
| That's not the "contra", you've just fallen for Apple's PR.
| epolanski wrote:
| What's the SMS cesspit?
| tylerchilds wrote:
| solution: red bubbles
|
| apple already does blue for in network and green for out of
| network
|
| red can just be "this message was yolo'd, be aware"
| cmiles74 wrote:
| Only letting Apple Watch have this functionality is what is
| wrong. It's clearly anti-competitive, in my opinion their hand-
| waving about security is just that.
|
| They could implement something that works for other smartwatch
| vendors, they haven't because they don't want to.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is
| that the ecosystem is closed"_
|
| I don't think that's the main reason. iMessage is available on
| macOS, so by definition isn't _that_ tightly locked down.
| Anyone can automate /script the desktop app to try and fire off
| as many messages as you like.
|
| But of course that won't really work because Apple has security
| algorithms in the network that detect unusual behaviour. Did
| that user/device suddenly start to fire off 1000 messages to
| users they've never contacted before? Activity flagged, user
| blocked.
|
| There are also functions in the iMessage app itself to block
| and report unwanted/inappropriate/spam messages. So even low-
| volume spammers will not get away with it for long.
|
| Besides, in the UK, SMS spam is almost non-existent in my
| experience. Unlike in some other countries I've visited where
| it's a huge problem. That's not because the ecosystem is any
| different - it's because there's strict rules that are actively
| enforced (see TPS: www.tpsonline.org.uk).
| etchalon wrote:
| I have a hard time sorting out the difference between a
| "restriction" and an "unwillingness to devote resources to making
| easy".
| kennysoona wrote:
| Restricting something isn't the opposite of devoting resources
| to make something easy.
|
| This is a false, and very strange, dichotomy.
| etchalon wrote:
| I never said it was the opposite?
| closetohome wrote:
| I can't help but feel echoes of the 2015-era Pebble trying to
| compete with the Apple Watch, and the lessons learned from that.
| I have an Apple Watch, I've been wearing one for ten years at
| this point. All I use it for is notifications, time, weather, and
| music control. I'm more than happy to buy a tinker-friendly
| smartwatch that does just that, and I don't think I'm alone. I
| hope these guys don't kill themselves trying to feature-match,
| and just lean into the inherent advantages of their platform.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Adding a comment in support. This seems like a really cool
| product and it sucks that Apple is gatekeeping features they use
| in their own crappy watch that needs to be charged all the
| time...
| mentalgear wrote:
| another illegal walled garden method
| jms703 wrote:
| I do not get smartwatches after having 2 of them. Back to a
| simple digital dumb watch.
| abhinavsharma wrote:
| between the restrictions, apple dropping the ball on AI, and
| Gemini slowly improving, the idea of Google significantly
| leapfrogging Apple in end-user experience is not that
| unfathomable any more.
| rednafi wrote:
| There's nothing new here. From AirDrop to AirPods, Apple's MO is
| to lock you into their ecosystem and be as belligerent as
| possible toward any non-Apple gizmo. Couple that with social and
| network effects, and you have a perfect formula for monopolizing
| a market without continuously improving the tech.
| briandear wrote:
| I like the ecosystem. If you don't, choose another ecosystem.
| csours wrote:
| "Love it or leave it" - why not make it better?
| shuckles wrote:
| Allowing support for a rich ecosystem of mediocre smart
| watches does not move the needle on making it better for me
| personally. And Apple probably has done the market research
| to confirm most of their customers are like me and not like
| Pebble users.
| csours wrote:
| > And Apple probably has done the market research to
| confirm most of their customers are like me and not like
| Pebble users.
|
| I'm sure. The customers they do not have are like Pebble
| users, and they don't want customers like Pebble users.
| They want customers like Apple Watch users.
|
| It is a bit 'masque of the red death' to defend anti-
| competitive practices, is all I'm saying.
| lucianbr wrote:
| I like that the EU forces Apple to be more open. If you
| don't, just don't come to Europe.
| tavavex wrote:
| If you like it, use it. Why not let other people augment the
| ecosystem? If Apple allowed Pebble to get full permissions
| and it all turned out to be the extremely unsafe, buggy
| disaster that everyone here chooses to portray it as, then
| you can still buy an Apple Watch. In what way does shutting
| out the competition benefit you?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _and you have a perfect formula for monopolizing a market
| without continuously improving the tech._
|
| ...but the Apple ecosystem has the best tech. M chips, AirPods
| Pro, Apple Watch, iPad, Pencil, I mean the tech is _great_.
|
| Apple isn't monopolizing anything. They're competing like hell
| and winning because their tech is best. The real question is
| why the Android and Microsoft ecosystems don't do better at
| improving _their_ tech. Where 's the Windows equivalent of an
| M4 MacBook Air in terms of performance and battery life?
| NotPractical wrote:
| > ...but the Apple ecosystem has the best tech
|
| You aren't in any position to make that call, since you have
| no opportunity to try competing products due to being locked
| in to an anticompetitive ecosystem. European iOS users will
| soon be able to decide if Apple really does have the best
| tech or not.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What are you talking about? I can try all the competing
| products compatible with Android and Windows. I'm not
| locked into _anything_ Apple because they 're not a
| monopoly. I am _very much_ in a position to "make that
| call".
| NotPractical wrote:
| You said that Apple makes the best tech, but you wouldn't
| know, because you cannot pair third party accessories
| with your Apple devices and have them work properly, so
| you cannot determine if third parties are capable of
| making accessories better than Apple or not.
|
| Whether or not a third party is capable of making a
| better "ecosystem" of interconnected devices is a
| separate concern; I'm talking about accessories here,
| which is the topic at hand.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I wouldn't know?
|
| Kind of amazing you're so confident I don't use the
| Android ecosystem for a whole bunch of stuff. You know a
| lot of people use one ecosystem for personal stuff, and
| another for work? Also that people do stuff like... read
| reviews? Compare features? Compare specs?
| DecentShoes wrote:
| Apple is monopolizing lots of things. You aren't allowed to
| make software for the iPhone without distributing exclusively
| thru the App Store. This whole post is about how they
| restrict third party watches.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| Microsoft couldn't compete themselves out of a wet paper bag
| (it may be a slightly different script, but they're anti-
| competitivists just like Apple).
|
| Apple technology is "great" as long as you you're rich enough
| to afford it, and buy into the whole ecosystem. And, most
| crucially: contort yourself yourself enough. (="If it's not
| working for you, you're not holding it right.")
| kulahan wrote:
| > Apple technology is "great" as long as you you're rich
| enough to afford it
|
| I don't know what point you're trying to make with this
| sentence. It comes across as missing the fact that high
| quality goods... cost more than low quality ones?
|
| Not to mention they have plenty of affordable tech. Their
| phones have always been roughly the same cost when adjusted
| for inflation - something pretty commendable. The iPods
| back in the day came in a huge range of affordable shapes
| and sizes for the quality.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| > It's very difficult to enable other iOS apps to work with
| Pebble. Basically iOS does not have the concept of 'interprocess
| communication'(IPC) like on Android.
|
| Actually, let me make this worse. iOS has plenty of IPC, you're
| just not allowed to define your own IPC protocols. IPC is solely
| for your app to talk to Apple's code, not for apps to talk to
| each other.
| vladcodes wrote:
| I completely get the point, and it's a shame. Apple is bad
| because it doesn't clearly announce this kind of limitation for
| third-party hardware and software before selling their phones.
| And I don't think Pebble or Garmin will either. Why not just
| limit your market to a platform that fits well? That would be the
| fairest solution for a customer.
| tech234a wrote:
| As a side note: Phone Link on Windows does allow replying to
| texts/iMessages on a connected iPhone. However, group messages
| are not handled properly, and message history from before the
| connection started isn't available. I believe it's available on
| an API that is only available on an older version of Bluetooth
| that is not low-energy. It can also sync contacts and do phone
| calls.
|
| Over BLE, it is possible to receive and delete notifications, as
| well as view and control media playback/volume/metadata.
| peter_vukovic wrote:
| Apple is simply continuing to do what Apple does best - building
| strong products and protecting their ecosystem.
|
| Does that mean some vendors will be treated unfairly? Of course.
|
| Does it mean Apple users will remain happy? Absolutely.
|
| If there is one OS that is anti-tinkering by design it is iOS,
| and yet people keep criticizing this intentional design decision
| that forms a large part of Apple's moat.
| Osiris wrote:
| Clearly not ALL users are happy because users of non-Apple
| watches are unhappy that their watch can do things with Android
| it's not allowed to do on iOS.
|
| It's not reasonable to make a blanket absolutist statement like
| that.
| mulderc wrote:
| I guess I don't see why Pebble, or any smart watch, should need a
| phone at all. The watch should be able to connect to wifi and/or
| cellular by itself. We should be able to run full apps on the
| watch itself.
| Majromax wrote:
| Battery life. Radios are energy-intensive, and the processing
| required to run "full apps" is also often pretty steep. In the
| meantime, while battery chemistries are getting better space is
| very much at a premium on one's wrist.
|
| From the other recently-posted article, the new Pebble watches
| are targeting 30-day battery lives between charges. That would
| be unthinkable for a watch that manages its own wifi/cellular
| connections.
| mulderc wrote:
| I had a pebble and the limitations of the device drove me
| insane. I don't care if my smart watch has 30 days of
| battery, I care about what it does and that I can do the
| things I want to do on it. The Apple watch has wifi and
| celluar and I can do tons of things on it without my phone
| around. Many of the apps I use have essentially full apps on
| device which allows me a lot more freedom from my phone and
| flexibility with my watch.
| bhelkey wrote:
| Two reasons:
|
| One, adding hardware to connect to WiFi and cellular increases
| size and power requirements. Notably, the new Pebble 's battery
| is projected to last 30 days.
|
| Two, people use phones. They want their watch to work with
| their phone instead of around it.
| mulderc wrote:
| WiFi and Cellular are avialble on the smallest of apple
| watches. I don't care if my smartwatch can go 30 days between
| a charge, none of that matters if it can't do what I want it
| to do. I had a pebble back in the day and I thought it was
| useless as it was such a limited device and it sounds like
| they want to replicate that experience. I'm happy the people
| that want such a device are getting it, but I don't get the
| appeal and want a device that can do thing.
| bhelkey wrote:
| > I'm happy the people that want such a device are getting
| it
|
| That's the important bit. I personally don't see the value
| in a wifi/cellular watch when I already carry a phone that
| has wifi and cellular.
|
| I get a lot of value in a watch with extended batter life.
| For example, I don't need to pack a dedicated watch charger
| when I travel.
| TMWNN wrote:
| As I wrote on Reddit
| <https://np.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1jea1k6/apple_restric...>
| to someone else critiquing the post:
|
| ----
|
| > he's going to opine about how Apple is "anti-competitive," and
| "evil,"
|
| Complete with obligatory Trump mention.
|
| I haven't owned a Pebble but have long heard how nice they are.
| That said, this is wrong:
|
| >It's impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text
| messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing,
| muting, replying) and many, many other things.
|
| My Amazfit Balance lets me dismiss iOS notifications. I don't
| know how Amazfit's Zepp app enables this functionality; all I
| know is that it works.
|
| Its integration with iOS is not ideal or complete; for example,
| although I can take and make phone calls with its mic and
| speaker, I can't talk to Siri through it despite my ancient $20
| running headset being able to do so. But Balance's other
| advantages are more than enough for me to go with it over an
| Apple Watch.
| sod wrote:
| I used an apple watch since the first one, updated twice, but
| stopped using it a few months ago. Siri got slower an more
| unreliable. Automatic sport detection became annoying. And still
| having to charge it every single day became pretty old. I miss
| being able to pay with my watch without having to unlock my
| phone. But thats about it. Anything else about that product just
| became annoying.
|
| I'm 100% certain that if 3rd party watches could integrate like
| apple watch could, that apple watch could be way better. But the
| lack of alternatives conceals how mediocre of a product it
| became. I wish apple wasn't such a control freak.
| lukevp wrote:
| The ultra only needs to be charged for like 45 mins every
| couple days. It's nice for the "find my phone" button and for
| getting alerts when my phone is in my pocket.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| They don't even offer the same support with BT headphones as
| their AirPods. Why on earth would they support something that
| could be a threat to their watches?
|
| What type of company do you people think Apple is, one that
| pleases hackers at the expense of their competition?
| manmal wrote:
| > Some features will appear first on our Android app, and then
| eventually we'll add them to the iOS app. This is because the
| majority of our development team uses Android phones, and
| generally we're building things for ourselves, so naturally
| Android comes first.
|
| Up to that paragraph I sympathized. Sometimes it does feel like
| Apple doesn't care one bit about me, an iOS developer. But, as a
| user, I really don't care what phones the devs use. I use an
| iPhone and now I feel like I'd be a second class citizen because
| of this paragraph. Not because Apple's restrictions are
| unnecessarily bad, but because the devs just care less. I guess
| I'd go for an Apple Watch instead.
|
| (Was a first gen Pebble owner btw)
| bhelkey wrote:
| Apple creates significant roadblocks for 3rd party accessories.
| Android does not.
|
| Is it really surprising that developers who love building third
| party accessories would choose Android?
| manmal wrote:
| They chose to make an iOS app though, and, it seems to be a
| second class citizen.
| bhelkey wrote:
| The US Department of Justice is currently suing Apple for
| this exact reason [1].
|
| They claim that Apple imposes restrictions on every non-
| Apple watch. Users then prefer the Apple Watch not because
| Apple made it better but because Apple made all other
| watches worse.
|
| If you are frustrated that Pebble takes longer to develop
| around artificial restrictions, I would direct those
| frustrations at the company creating the restrictions not
| at Pebble.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-
| department-s...
| gxs wrote:
| > I don't want to see any tweets or blog posts or complaints or
| whatever later on about this. I'm publishing this now so you can
| make an informed decision about whether to buy a new watch or
| not. If you're worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy
| an Android phone.
|
| Agree or disagree with what he's saying, he sounds like a
| petulant child
| briandear wrote:
| > If you're worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an
| Android phone.
|
| The easiest solution is to buy Apple Watch.
| gslepak wrote:
| > _If you're worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy
| an Android phone._
|
| Readers might be interested in our Ultimate iOS to GrapheneOS
| Migration Guide and Review:
|
| https://blog.okturtles.org/2024/06/the-ultimate-ios-to-graph...
| piyuv wrote:
| Nice guide! Immich should be added for Photos imo
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| (this is excellent!)
| conradev wrote:
| Reminds me of the time I wrote a jailbreak tweak for iPhone to
| send more types of notifications to Pebble back in 2013:
|
| https://www.engadget.com/2013-02-14-hack-brings-all-iphone-n...
|
| https://github.com/conradev/btnotificationenabler
|
| This has been a problem for a long time.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I think people forget that Apple is not making devices for the
| Hackernews community. They are making devices for people that
| just want something that works pretty well and has reasonable
| security - even to the extent of protecting them from themselves.
| They have other things to do with their time than learn about
| security vulnerabilities and how to avoid them. They want to just
| click 'yes' on every popup and expect things to keep working.
| Because they know that they are not qualified to answer that
| yes/no popup question. And those people do not care much about
| lock-in and walled gardens. They are not interested in
| jailbreaking and sideloading apps. They've never heard of Pebble
| or have any interest in it.
|
| This is 90% of humanity, including people we all know and love.
|
| Apple serves these people pretty well.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The post has a section regarding these concepts and why the
| author disagrees, why not respond to that directly instead?
|
| I tend to side somewhat with what the author is saying: they
| can be both relatively true statements and a way to abuse
| market power at the same time so identifying it as fitting the
| mold of one or the other is only the start of the conversation.
| People against the practices tend to care more about the latter
| and I think that's why we've seen the EU, Japan, and now Brazil
| regulate the behavior based on that rather than asking "what's
| Apple's target usage type".
| sigmar wrote:
| Couldn't you make that argument for literally any
| anticompetitive practice? Like in the 1990s: "Microsoft isn't
| making an OS for people that want to try different browsers"
| liquid_thyme wrote:
| Yes, you could. It's indeed troubling to see this mindset on
| HN. We have an overflow of professional "explainers" these
| days, we need more doers and fighters.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The "hackers" grew up and made money. Don't rock the boat!
| frollogaston wrote:
| If you want to do and fight, use Linux. Apple made their
| intentions clear decades ago.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Better than voting with your wallet is voting with your
| vote and getting regulations in place.
| sneak wrote:
| Not any anticompetitive practice, just the ones that allow in
| competitors who have different security models for
| human/computer interaction.
|
| Imagine if you could swap out Siri for Alexa. The privacy
| guarantees are nothing alike. People buy iPhones because they
| prohibit unsafe choices.
| Osiris wrote:
| Source? What data do you have that "prohits unsafe choices"
| is the only or #1 reason that people buy an iPhone over an
| Android?
| eddieroger wrote:
| Unlike Microsoft of the 90s, there are alternative mobile
| operating systems that are actually competing with iOS and
| Apple, so the argument isn't the same. In fact, people point
| out that iOS doesn't have majority share when you look at
| global usage, and only has a small majority when you look at
| the US. Microsoft's next nearest OS competitor didn't make a
| browser, and a lot more than half of computer users were
| using Windows.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Making your own products interoperate better than
| competitors' products is pretty typical and I don't think it
| rises to the level of "anticompetitive practice."
|
| If you don't like it (and I can totally understand why),
| there are numerous other smartphone makers out there with
| products that allow better integration with these watches and
| you're free to buy one.
|
| MS didn't get into trouble because they went after competing
| browsers, they got into trouble for doing that while also
| having a monopoly on PC OSes. Apple doesn't have anything
| like a monopoly in this market (their US market share is
| about 50%, worldwide is around 28%).
| Osiris wrote:
| Microsoft absolutely got in trouble for purposefully making
| other Office suites not work correctly on Windows, for
| using private Windows APIs in Office that other companies
| didn't have access to, etc.
|
| If Apple makes a watch that can receive and send iMessages
| then there is no reason any other device shouldn't be able
| to use the same APIs that Apple uses.
|
| It absolutely creates a system where competitors literally
| cannot compete with the same features.
| wat10000 wrote:
| They got in trouble for doing that stuff while having a
| monopoly on PC OSes. Using private stuff to give your own
| products an advantage is (legally) fine if you're not
| leveraging a monopoly to do it.
| frollogaston wrote:
| I honestly don't care about Microsoft bundling a browser. The
| real problem was that they intentionally broke web standards
| to push websites to "work best on Internet Explorer," so even
| those who chose not to use Windows were caught up in it.
| Whereas, Android users aren't affected by what Apple does
| here.
|
| They still bundle Edge, and keep setting it to default. But
| idc, it's just one of 1000 reasons I don't use Windows.
| apatheticonion wrote:
| Apple do this too with their products - but in more subtle
| ways.
|
| For instance, try to play a video game on MacOS. While
| Vulkan is available on every playform, it's not available
| on MacOS or iOS despite the fact that it would take an
| engineer at Apple a weekend to implement (figuritively
| speaking). Apple are also killing off OpenGL support for
| MacOS.
|
| Generally, Apple deliberately build a "dependence
| ecosystem" for their consumers on the product side while
| also actively preventing engineers from using portable
| technologies on their platforms.
|
| The fact that MacOS is as open as it currently is is a
| miracle and I am sure executives hate that.
|
| They create the fastest and most ergonomic mobile hardware
| on Earth but, outside of web browsing, video editing and
| some engineering workloads, there's very little you can
| actually do on it.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Oh yeah, Mac video games sorta don't exist. The dev can
| jump through all those hoops and still have random OS
| updates break it constantly. Almost as bad just for
| regular apps.
|
| Re executives being mad: The thing is, they make money
| off Mac hardware, and even then its profits are dwarfed
| by iPhone and iPhone accessories. Which are of course
| locked down.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Isn't the WebKit the only allowed browser engine on iOS?
| frollogaston wrote:
| Yes. Essentially Safari is the only iOS browser.
| Ironically, this is the only thing stopping a Chrome web
| monopoly.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Only if they're a monopoly.
|
| In the 1990's, Microsoft Windows had over 90% of operating
| system market share. They were a monopoly.
|
| iPhones are only 58% versus Android in the US right now.
| That's nowhere close to monopoly. Globally Android has 71%.
| Android is thriving.
|
| With Windows, you didn't have a choice. With iOS and Android,
| you have choice.
| clemiclemen wrote:
| At which point does a monopoly becomes a monopoly?
|
| There is no need to have a "clear" monopoly like Windows in
| 1990's to abuse your power and presence in the market.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _At which point does a monopoly becomes a monopoly?_
|
| It's generally in the 70-90% range. Right now, it's much
| easier to argue that _Android_ has a global monopoly.
|
| > _There is no need to have a "clear" monopoly like
| Windows in 1990's to abuse your power and presence in the
| market._
|
| Well it depends what you mean by "abuse". I mean, even
| small companies can "abuse" their customers by not
| building the interoperability their customers want. But
| we generally prioritize individual freedom, that private
| businesses ought to have free choice in what they work
| with or don't. That's important.
|
| That only becomes a problem when consumers aren't able to
| switch to a competitor. I.e. when there is a monopoly
| provider. I.e. which controls 70-90%+ of the market.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| we're getting close then in usa
| https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/us-
| smartphone-...
|
| https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.wsj.
| com...
| liquid_thyme wrote:
| Whose side are you on exactly? I'm sure Apple doesn't need help
| amplifying their position.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Apple are making devices for people who want things that look
| pretty. Functionality is generally not the major concern. Think
| about it.
|
| They are late with most new tech as they will just wait until
| it becomes cheaper, why? Because they already know it's not a
| deal breaker.
|
| They removed a bunch of fundamental and heavily used ports from
| the Macbook for years. Because they knew people would just work
| around it and buy dongles.
|
| They put the charging port for their wireless mouse on the
| bottom of the mouse so it wasn't possible to charge and use the
| mouse at the same time. Because they knew people would put up
| with it because it was pretty.
|
| For a lot of people, it's not that it works well or anything.
| It's about the brand and the design. It's about the marketing.
| And when it's about that and not the actual product you can do
| whatever you want to your product and it doesn't really matter.
| And compatibility with other brands doesn't matter because
| they've already bought into Apple's brand over everything else
| including basic functionality.
| frollogaston wrote:
| I'm annoyed about the dongles, but that's about it. Macs work
| better.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| It all depends on what you're doing. For many on here, Macs
| are technically worse because they use docker and that
| means instead of just running docker and using the
| container functionality in the Linux kernel they have to
| virtualise a Linux VM to run docker in. If you're gaming
| it's not as good as Windows. Macs are ok, they do the job
| and in some areas they are better. But really, for most it
| doesn't matter, it's all about brand.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Docker is fine on Mac but still a small sliver of user
| base, and nobody is buying a Mac to play games. For all
| those other general uses, people find them better, that's
| why they buy them. Not for style.
|
| Apple Watch for style, sure. It's a watch.
| efdee wrote:
| > They have other things to do with their time than learn about
| security vulnerabilities and how to avoid them.
|
| You're making that statement as if iPhones don't have security
| issues and people using Android definitely have to learn about
| those things.
|
| > They want to just click 'yes' on every popup and expect
| things to keep working. Because they know that they are not
| qualified to answer that yes/no popup question. And those
| people do not care much about lock-in and walled gardens.
|
| What exactly is it that Apple does that makes it not matter
| whether you click 'yes' or 'no' on these popups?
| alterom wrote:
| To add: if the goal is to make a system where the yes/no
| answer is irrelevant, then it's a system when very horrible
| UX: the pop-up shouldn't be there in the first place!
|
| This also doesn't address the obvious solution: safe and easy
| defaults, and an option for manual overrides in advanced _" I
| know what I'm doing"_ settings.
|
| And no pop-ups _at all_.
| CivBase wrote:
| IMO, Apple's position as part of a duopoly disqualifies them
| that kind of defense.
|
| When customers aren't empowered to choose which company they
| engage with, companies should not be allowed to choose which
| customers they support.
| frollogaston wrote:
| The customer has plenty of choice here, including just not
| having a smartwatch. It's a toy.
| CivBase wrote:
| Plenty of choice... so long as that choice has been
| approved by Apple. It's a very convenient position for a
| company with a competing product.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Apple doesn't approve of me not having an Apple Watch.
| Osiris wrote:
| Really? Did you have to pair your Apple watch? Did Apple
| sign the software on the watch? Did Apple build special
| APIs and tools into iOS to support certain features of
| the Apple Watch?
|
| Apple is demonstrating here that they can control every
| aspect of what you can do with your phone, including not
| allowing Pebble to work.
|
| Apple doesn't even allow you to replace broken parts in
| your phone unless it has an Apple approved signature that
| can be validated.
| frollogaston wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean, I don't have an Apple watch.
| Also idk what a Pebble is.
|
| > Apple doesn't even allow you to replace broken parts in
| your phone unless it has an Apple approved signature that
| can be validated.
|
| That's fine, I don't want to buy a used iPhone and find
| out it has random parts in it.
| CivBase wrote:
| What point are you making here? That Apple should be able
| to leverage their market position to crush their
| competition for a particular device just because it
| doesn't affect you in particular? You don't care for
| smart watches so the smart watch market should be exempt
| from regulation?
| frollogaston wrote:
| Exactly. They're just toys. I also don't care that my
| Nintendo GameCube can't use an Xbox controller.
| 0xEF wrote:
| It's crazy that so many don't realize this. I am not an Apple
| user, likely never will be, but I recommend their tech
| frequently. They meet that market's needs with aplomb and I
| respect that.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| > This is 90% of humanity, including people we all know and
| love.
|
| I'd say more like 95-99% of humanity tbh.
| queuebert wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy. You can build a system that is
| secure by default but allows you to opt out with sufficient
| technical knowledge.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| Or also just have a corporation with enough technical
| knowledge themselves to work out security.... I suppose they
| figure it's not in their business interests though.
| shantara wrote:
| We're rapidly approaching the point where having a smartphone
| is becoming a necessity for being a functional part of the
| society. You could argue that is some countries we're already
| past that point. A device of this social importance that's also
| locked into one of the two American megacorps absolutely needs
| as much scrutiny as possible, since the interests of those
| megacorps are not aligned with the interests of the society.
|
| To give one example, Apple has removed an option for Airdrop
| file sharing between iPhones that are not on one another's
| contact lists after the pressure from the Chinese government to
| stop it from being used for protests coordination. And yet this
| change was silently rolled out globally as a part of an iOS
| update.
|
| So, no, "Good enough for most people" is not actually good
| enough.
| nomel wrote:
| This is somewhat false. It wasn't removed, it just takes
| intent now, and it has a timeout. I've been spammed by
| strangers with airdrop before, and have accidentally
| airdropped things to strangers. I enjoy the increased intent.
|
| But, gone are the fun days people spam airdropping funny
| "This is the captain" pictures to everyone while waiting for
| takeoff in an airplane.
| vv_ wrote:
| > having a smartphone is becoming a necessity for being a
| functional part of the society
|
| This is correct, as in some countries, you use your phone to
| authenticate access to banking applications and payments
| (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart-ID). However, I
| find it a bit of a stretch to claim that having iMessage
| access on a smartwatch is essential for being a functional
| member of society.
|
| Corporations will always take steps to ensure their
| profitability. Apple, for example, is incentivized to keep
| its systems locked down to maintain its ecosystem. There are
| likely other justifiable considerations behind these
| decisions. While laws exist to regulate what corporations can
| and cannot do, there should be a reasonable balance. That
| said, I don't think this is a battle worth fighting - people
| can simply switch to an Android phone, which offers better
| support for a wider range of smartwatches.
| brailsafe wrote:
| iPhones are the Starbucks of phones. They were sort of novel
| and better than competition for a few years after launch maybe,
| became a status symbol, and then all the people who bought in
| stuck around while it became a bit old hat and uninteresting
| while paying the price that it was when it was still cool. If I
| want a capable rectangle, there are plenty of options now that
| are better and cheaper and more reliable. iOS and iPhones and
| just fine if you don't care, just like Starbucks is fine if you
| don't drink black coffee or have no options
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| > And those people do not care much about lock-in and walled
| gardens. They are not interested in jailbreaking and
| sideloading apps. They've never heard of Pebble or have any
| interest in it.
|
| Customers are interested in new products and services that are
| good. This is how all currently popular products began,
| obviously. By preventing competitors from being good, as Apple
| and Microsoft and Amazon and other mega corporations regularly
| do, there's no chance for competition to get to the point of
| attracting customers in the first place. Those people that you
| think are not interested in one thing or the other COULD want
| those things if they were allowed and easy to do without all
| these anti competitive practices.
| Osiris wrote:
| Wouldn't "see my text messages on my watch" be included in
| "works pretty well?"
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| People who don't read Hacker News occasionally want nice things
| too, and don't necessarily deserve corporations infantalising
| them.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Sub $200 smart-watches would be great for a lot of people.
| freddydumont wrote:
| I wonder what people mean here by "security promises" made by
| Apple. There is no such thing.
|
| iMessage has been targeted for years with zero click exploits,
| most notably by the NSO group.
|
| Apple's restrictions aren't meant to protect consumers, their
| purpose is to protect Apple's profits.
| teekert wrote:
| My current iPhone 12 mini was my first iPhone. Before they it was
| a OnePlus3, before that a Lumia 800. I tasted it all. I think
| it's back to Android after this, specifically a GrapheneOS Pixel.
| It's the sweet spot for the modern hacker. And I'm gonna have a
| great Pebble experience or some other cool watch via
| GadgetBridge.
| MPSFounder wrote:
| I like Apple. But this is exactly why regulation is needed. I
| often meet people (including knowledgeable engineers etc) who
| think companies will do the best thing. Just like Flint did the
| best thing by poisoning their own people. Apple is a for profit
| company, and it will debilitate any 3rd party device. That is
| because by killing its market, profit is to be made by buying it
| for cheap. It's that simple folks. The end user can go and screw
| themselves, as far as they are concerned.
| firefax wrote:
| This sounds noncompetitive, and bad, but can I just say I don't
| see the appeal of these watches? I much prefer a simple casio.
|
| I got around Europe with a CA-53W. I did currency conversion, and
| had an alarm so I didn't have to leave my phone unattended in a
| 10 bed hostel.
|
| I find my mind is clearer not using these things, not constantly
| bombarded with pings, and instead mindfully checking the phone
| occasionally to see if I missed any texts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_CA-53W
| jdalgetty wrote:
| Couldn't something like blue bubbles solve this issue?
| xenodium wrote:
| > It's impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text
| messages
|
| From Apple's docs: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102842
|
| "Message Access Profile (MAP 1.4)
|
| This profile is compatible with iPhone 5s and later.
|
| Message Access Profile allows devices to exchange messages. It's
| used to receive incoming message notifications on connected
| vehicles. iOS and iPadOS support these MAP functions on connected
| vehicles:
|
| - Receive incoming message notifications
|
| - Reply to incoming messages
|
| - Compose new messages
|
| - Browse message inbox
|
| - Mark messages as read"
|
| The documentation talks about "connected vehicles", but can
| totally be implemented by any Bluetooth accessory.
| alphan0n wrote:
| > Every accessory that is compatible with a device and supports
| MAP must:
|
| >*..
|
| >*..
|
| >*Not provide a user interface for sending messages. Devices do
| not support sending messages using MAP.
|
| From: "Accessory Design Guidelines for Apple Devices" [0]
|
| [0] https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-
| content/uploads/attachments/Blu...
| xenodium wrote:
| It's been a little while since I've worked in the space, but
| it's worth checking a newer revision as this wording may no
| longer be present
| https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-
| Gui...
|
| From a technical standpoint, there is no limitation for an
| accessory to implement the profile.
| otikik wrote:
| Frequent iPhone user here. Don't care about iMessage a little
| bit.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43400989
| legitster wrote:
| Not too long ago it was revealed that Apple's supposedly secure
| protocol for their Airpods entirely relied on plaintext keys
| locked to the hardware. Based on the quality of their software
| products, I am not surprised.
|
| The Apple razor: "Never attribute to security that which can be
| adequately be explained by incompetence."
| standardUser wrote:
| I know people love Apple products, as do I, but at a certain
| point it must get exhausting arguing that the wealthiest company
| with the largest market share is also, somehow, the one that
| should be exempt from anti-trust action and/or exempt from
| developing simple 3rd party integrations.
| captainmuon wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is policy, and how much is actually a
| technical limitation.
|
| For example, could you build an app that would not pass app store
| review, that would be able to send SMS or manipulate
| notifications? If so you could just "install" it yourself with
| Xcode.
| incanus77 wrote:
| Whenever I go to this one restaurant, they insist on feeding me
| the bread that they make. I bring my own dough, but they won't
| let me into the kitchen to use their equipment. It's a hobbled
| experience and they are doing it entirely in the name of
| increased profits. The bread could be awesome! The problem is, I
| want to eat at _this_ restaurant. They are ruining my bread
| experience.
| bigyabai wrote:
| This is more like shopping for bread, selecting the bread you
| want, taking it home, slicing off a piece and being told you
| can't eat it since it didn't come from the right store.
|
| It's all just software. You can download IPA files onto your
| iPhone, just not install them without an arbitrary feature-flag
| enabled.
| tonymet wrote:
| in the 90s there were no APIs you would just debug resident
| memory and network buffers to reverse engineer the API & IPC
|
| Am I old or do people have higher expectations now?
| ferbivore wrote:
| The author of this article was also the CEO of Beeper. They did
| just that and released an iMessage client for Android in
| December 2023. Apple proceeded to ban users of that client,
| launched a smear campaign against the company and implemented
| countermeasures until Beeper gave up on the whole endeavour.
|
| Apple has lots of options at their disposal to frustrate any
| attempts to reverse engineer their APIs, and have shown they're
| willing to go above and beyond in defending their walled
| garden. If all else fails, every Apple device newer than 2018
| has a secure enclave and verified boot, so they could just
| enforce an encrypted channel between the enclave - which will
| be able to attest that the device is running latest iOS or
| macOS with all DRM measures enabled - and iMessage servers. The
| only reason they don't do that already is the number of users
| on older devices, but that number gets lower and lower each
| year.
| omneity wrote:
| First with Beeper and now with Pebble. I see a pattern here.
| _atyler_ wrote:
| This makes sense for large-scale deployments where cost control
| is paramount, but I wonder how it holds up in environments with
| unpredictable traffic patterns. Have you found any practical
| workarounds for the lag introduced by dynamic scaling? In my
| experience, the trade-off between cost efficiency and real-time
| performance isn't always worth it.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Didn't Eric run into the same thing at Beeper?
| xfz wrote:
| This is why the only Apple device I'll buy is a MacBook Pro, and
| even then if they wall it off as badly as their other products
| I'll reconsider.
| timwis wrote:
| I degoogled my life out of principle--that one was about privacy.
| I feel strongly about this one too (in fact I just migrated from
| kindle to kobo for similar reasons), but where else is there to
| go? Some rooted android phone with Google play services disabled,
| where lots of apps aren't available and it's a struggle to get
| everything to work? (Genuine question!)
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| An answer with a catch:
|
| I ran rooted android phones for a long time, but have for the
| past few years been on GrapheneOS, which doesn't require Google
| Play, but allows you to use it while sandboxing it (so, harm
| reduction), and it's much less of a struggle now than it used
| to be.
|
| The catch is that, at least currently, GrapheneOS only works on
| (Google) Pixel phones.
|
| [On Kobos:-- I agree on Kobo vs Kindle, and like Kobos a lot:
| but partially because I don't actually have to use Kobo's
| software if I don't want to. (See KOReader[0] and
| NickelMenu[1].)
|
| [0:] https://github.com/koreader/koreader
|
| [1:] https://github.com/pgaskin/NickelMenu ]
| bfrog wrote:
| More like Apple restricts data being shared with 3rd party
| devices as it then loses all hope of curtailing abuse.
|
| As someone who uses Apple _because_ of their MO is not selling
| everything about me to advertisers this is great news.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Yet Apple is fine letting users browse Safari with an
| unfiltered internet. If their APIs can't facilitate safe
| permissions for user data, maybe they need to re-configure
| their security model to look more like the Mac. UNIX solved
| this decades ago.
| skurilyak wrote:
| For iOS compatibility, consider this architecture:
|
| - Swift UI layer for Apple-compliant UI/UX
|
| - Zig core library (as XCFramework) for watch communication
|
| - Data processing WebAssembly runtime for watchface
| interpretation
|
| This avoids Pebble's original JS compiler workaround while still
| enabling customizable watchfaces within Apple's restrictions
|
| The WASM engine stays within App Store guidelines by interpreting
| watchfaces as data rather than executable code
|
| TL;DR to avoid this:
|
| iOS App (Swift UI) <-> Zig Core Library (XCFramework) <->
| WebAssembly Runtime (for watchfaces)
| JaggerJo wrote:
| In Europe Apple was forced to allow side loading + alternative
| app stores.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-gb/117767
|
| Might be possible to do more (like call private apis) when apps
| don't need to pass app review.
| rambambram wrote:
| There's something about the title that irks me the wrong way.
|
| X restricts Y from being awesome.
|
| Apple also restricts me from being awesome because they didn't
| give me a million dollar.
|
| I get what the message is and I think I agree with Pebble on the
| iPhone being more closed off, but putting the blame on some
| outside thing for yourself not being awesome just feels immature.
|
| It's just as easy to turn it around: by developing the iPhone in
| the first place and getting it in the hands of a lot of people,
| Apple makes it possible for Pebble to be at least close to
| awesome.
| burnte wrote:
| > Apple also restricts me from being awesome because they
| didn't give me a million dollar.
|
| This is a disingenuous argument. The two are nothing alike. One
| is about how they artificially limit their platform for their
| own dominance, and the other is literally just giving away
| money. One hurts consumers and competitors, the other is a
| nonsense expectation that no reasonable person has.
| IceHegel wrote:
| Feels like we're getting all the downsides of Jobs' Apple without
| the upsides.
|
| They aren't innovating inside the walled garden anymore.
|
| Privacy is a real issue and Tim Cook deserves credit for his
| stance, but if apple gave devs good apis security and privacy
| could actually be enhanced throughout the ecosystem.
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