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Comment by sbjs | Hacker News Reader

Wait, am I understanding this right? Apple is doing exactly what they forbid iOS developers from doing for years? Downloading code from the internet and executing it, in order to make runtime decisions or to allow live upgrades? That's just hypocritical BS right there. But the comment thread in the tweet is wrong about it being dangerous. Lua can be sandboxed like any decent VM in 2018. "Danger" isn't the problem.

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What. Apple has no issues trusting Apple 100% completely, nor do any of their users. Or more specifically, Apple itself is simply an inseparable part of the core trust foundation since they control the entire stack of hardware, firmware and software. You calling this "hypocritical BS" is just nonsense, it's like acting shocked that Apple doesn't allow any random developer to issue microcode processor updates even though Apple could. Of course Apple can, there is no equality there. Apple develops private code and dogfoods it before making it public. Any platform developer by definition has to do low level stuff as part of making higher level stuff. This is not difficult.

"Hypocrisy" gets thrown around way too often on the Internet, and if you do so you are basically always wrong, either because it's not actually hypocrisy at all (the word is not a synonym for "anything I don't like") or because it's a meaningless thing to say anyway vs more substantive complaints.

It's also worth noting that the bundle that includes the Lua code is signed and its signature gets verified by the OS before running.

> "Hypocrisy" gets thrown around way too often on the Internet, and if you do so you are basically always wrong, either because it's not actually hypocrisy at all (the word is not a synonym for "anything I don't like") or because it's a meaningless thing to say anyway vs more substantive complaints.

Another thing - hypocrisy has no bearing on the conclusion of the argument. You can be a hypocrite and be logically correct. OTOH, you can be far away from a hypocrite and be wrong.

Apple owns the OS. They've used private frameworks in their apps for years too, even though third party apps aren't allowed. Because they own the platform. It's hardly surprising.

Adding to the other replies explaining why it's not hypocritical, I have an example. Consider section 5.2.4 of Apple's App Store Review Guidelines https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#int...

    > 5.2.4 Apple Endorsements: Don’t suggest or infer that Apple is a source or
    > supplier of the App, or that Apple endorses any particular representation
    > regarding quality or functionality.

Apple definitely infers and suggests and even explicitly states that Apple is the supplier of their own apps. This clearly violates section 5.2.4. But Apple does not have to follow the rules that apply to third party developers because they're not third party developers. They're first party developers.

I think they mean "imply" rather than "infer", don't they? Inferring is drawing a conclusion: you imply something, and I infer your meaning.

Good catch. I didn't notice that when copying it.

There's a reason that there's App Review for 3rd party devs. Apple doesn't need app review for its own apps.

You aren’t understanding it right. That isn’t forbidden.

Of course, it is their platform. The reason they prevent runtime/live updates is because 3rd party developers can and will easily inject malicious code.

Apples owns the entire platform, I have no problem with them having "root" privileges. Honestly I'd rather have a closed platform with strict guidelines than the wild wild west that is Android.

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