Hacker News Reader

Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

For the non-technical majority they are a huge advantage. We're never going to have average users fully technically aware.

I well remember the state of Windows during Win 98 and XP where most had no idea what they were downloading, and it seemed every machine had malware, hidden pop ups and 37 IE toolbars. I was constantly asked to clean up friend's machines from the damage done by Kazaa and its associated garbage or some other drive-by crap.

If a restrictive app store is the cost of avoiding that and gaining some minimum enforced standards, safety and confidence to avoid crapware, I've actually come to think it a price well worth paying.

The fact that Google are so laissez faire about the Android app store, and let so much crap in, just further highlights the potential benefits that Google aren't fully providing.

View on HN

Imagine of Microsoft had a similar store to Apple in 1995 with the same restrictions on downloading and executing external code. The web itself could have been killed in the cradle on day one.

The fact that you are here typing this reply right now is entirely because of the state of Windows during 98 and XP. It's a balance between security and freedom. You are arguing for the benefit of security while ignoring the effect that freedom has had on the last 30 years of computing.

It's always hard to predict how things would have turned out given various alternate possibilities. The web could have been killed, or thrived anyway.

Perhaps a locked-down Microsoft store would have had all kinds of ancillary benefits such as freeing up all the money spent padding their bottom line and dealing with externalities (malware cleanup, etc) and redirecting it towards having competitive open-source/GPL products for regular users. Perhaps all the forgotten OSes that died out due to Microsoft's dominant position would have found their fanbases and survived (OS/2 Warp, AmigaOS, BeOS, etc.) and the web would have avoided the IE6 problem that was due to Microsoft's prevalence.

Microsoft may have brought computing to the masses in the 90's due to Windows prevalence in that era, but assuming the web wouldn't have happened without them is a bit much.

> We're never going to have average users fully technically aware.

OP is establishing that there are different types of users with different usage requirements.

You and Grandma are very different users. Grandma is probably much better served by an iPad and App Store than a true general computing device. Grandma is also not going to invent the next internet.

Maybe we should embrace this dichotomy instead of pretending one size fits all.

Interesting aside: How much innovation does the world miss out on if we raise the next generation of users on locked down "Grandma" interfaces?

At this point in time "Grandma" could have been involved in the creation of the internet and working on the next big thing. Maybe use the word expert or techie or something.

Edit: :)

True. I just wanted a nice folksy metaphor.

Should have added a smiley or something to my comment. I meant it more as a history remimder then social commentary.

That claim could be made at literally any point in history. Even in 1983, any employee at ARPA could have been a grandparent. Old people have been involved in technology since the very beginning. I'm not seeing your point.

I was thinking the internet was started around 1970. Your point is correct, but any Grandma working on it then is very likely dead, so unlikely to be working on the next internet.

You have completely twisted that point to mean something else.

The point is that certain parts of our society are not technical and will never be technical. Despite the expectations and wishes of a tiny minority of technical people.

There are two problems with this: Both these types of users can't co-exist on the same device type or ecosystem. Grandma might not invent the next internet on an iPad but your kid is also never going to get that opportunity.

And secondly, since you can't install the next internet on the iPad, Grandma is never going to get to use it.

>Both these types of users can't co-exist on the same device type or ecosystem.

This is false.

An eco system can easily contain a locked down channel for installing programs as well as an open channel to side-load.

The context here is that we're discussing fully locked down platforms.

But that's with the content ofthe argument that a functioning eco system needs to be locked down.

It doesn't really.

> Both these types of users can't co-exist on the same device type or ecosystem.

That's my point though. One size fits all doesn't work all that well in practice. As a technologist you seem to prefer the freedom of general compute. As a fellow technologist, I agree. We are a minority though. The vast majority of people don't seem to want much more from their devices than a working browser. (and maybe Instagram). To them things like root access are more a liability than asset.

> Grandma might not invent the next internet on an iPad but your kid is also never going to get that opportunity.

This is a real concern to me. What happens when whole generations view computers as black boxes of consumption rather than tools of creation / something to tinker with? Probably nothing good.

I think we agree... I highly recommend iPhones and iPads to non-technical friends and family members for that exact reason. They are essentially foolproof.

But I really don't like the fact that they are fully gated devices. Apple has already keep useful, but competitive-to-them, applications off their platform. They've force developers to eliminate user-beneficial changes to their applications. This is not good even for non-technical users but it's much more difficult to quantify.

One real example is that all users would benefit from alternative competitive web browsers on iOS but they can't have it.

“User-beneficial” — according to whom? How do all users benefit from alternative web browsers on iOS? I would argue that users benefit more from security. Is there really much a user can’t do on iOS? What exactly are they missing out on? And whatever that is, does it offset the value from being reasonably safe from malware or badly written apps?

What competitive software is not available on iOS? Every service that Apple sells has a comietitjr on iOS.

Chrome

It's on the App Store.

A Firefox and Chrome themed wrapper around safari are available on the app store. The meaningful components of those browsers are not.

Well for Google, the "meaningful parts" is to collect data. For users, it's to be able to sync bookmarks, passwords, etc.

Compilers and IDEs for major programming languages

Emulators for classic arcade games (or emulators of almost any sort).

Emulators from third parties not related to the original publisher are using copyrighted firmware and the only way you are going to play games realistically is using pirated images. I'm no making a moral judgement. Plenty of movies have fallen off of the back of truck onto my Plex Server.

The company that owns both the original console and the copyrighted game is free to publish a game that runs on top of an emulator. Sega has plenty of games on the App Store that are basically the emulator bundled with the game image.

> What happens when whole generations view computers as black boxes of consumption rather than tools of creation

You're already seeing it. Most people under 35 have likely spent most of their "computing time" by playing games on game consoles, which are precisely black boxes of consumption. And this is the result: walled gardens.

> What happens when whole generations view computers as black boxes of consumption rather than tools of creation / something to tinker with?

But that's how every generation since computers existed has mostly viewed them; tinkerers have been a small minority, even if young tinkerers-of-computers were an iconic image associated with the first generation in which that was a possible thing. That wasn't because they were common, but because it amazed (mostly older) people that they existed at all.

> Grandma might not invent the next internet on an iPad but your kid is also never going to get that opportunity.

Actually Playgrounds is pretty amazing. And you can definitely spin up a development platform in AWS and then Remote Desktop from your iPad or access via Coda or similar Terminal tools.

I'm pretty ok with OSX and that's an OS that is both noob-friendly and comes with powerful modification features.

I do think both types of users can co-exist on the same platform. People of all knowledge levels use Windows & Android.

Quite a lot, if there's no easy way to step outside of the walled garden. You could argue that Apple does provide one with their developer efforts, but I'm not sure if that quite cuts it.

And how many unnecessary toolbar installs in IE, viruses, and ransomware do we avoid?

Imagine if AOL had created 'apps' you could run, only while connected to AOL? I mean they had games and things like being able to buy airline tickets, and chat rooms, but imagine if there were 3rd party access.

They did, they had 'sites' that were just AOL pages existing inside their own framework. They only added the broader internet access later. Same with CompuServe, all similar services like those had proprietary pages like a massive worldwide BBS system.

You could not see AOL pages from CompuServe and vice versa.

"Just search for AOL Keyword %n"

> The web itself could have been killed in the cradle on day one.

The web is such a killer app, that if MS blocked it, it would be a problem for MS, not the web, imho.

Also IANAL, but given that MS launched a competing service - The Microsoft Network - this seems like a huge anti-trust issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up

The combination of consumer demand for web access + anti-trust would probably crush MS, and it would have to provide access.

Another factor is that Windows was always a target for hackers, so it's virtually certain there'd be some jailbreaking solution that everyone would use if MS started blocking access to killer apps like web access.

MS was a near monopoly, but there were enough exceptions that people were aware how amazing the web is.

Finally, if MS took the Walled Garden approach, it's easy to argue it wouldn't be the monopoly it was. MS benefited immensely from its platform being "free" (as in pirated) and "open" (as in hackable and insecure).

There was a company who took the other approach. Its name is Apple and it wasn't doing too well against MS in 1995.

We are talking hypothetical here -- all things being equal. Apple doesn't have anti-trust problems, they've closed off hackers, etc. Apple might not have a monopoly but closed-platform mobile OS is basicaly the whole market.

But that's all beside the point, the web was a killer app because it was available. Microsoft could have killed it with the same policies as iOS long before it was ever popular. And not by targeting it specifically for competitive reasons but just because it would have been against the very same rules we take for granted now. It wouldn't have even had to be conscious effort.

You can't even get another web browser on iOS! We literally can't even invent the "next web" on mobile. There's no point even trying.

> We literally can't even invent the "next web" on mobile. There's no point even trying.

This right here.

I wonder if anyone at Apple even cares. Maybe they’re so pompous they don’t think anyone other than them even could invent the next web.

Whoever does, will have to invent their own hardware too I guess.

Internet is bigger than Web browsers and Hypermedia systems are even older.

There is plently of room for inovation.

Emabrace network protocols and native apps.

That would have pushed Microsoft even further into the anit-trust shit they were in.

Also you had more technical users back then as the majority of the base who really wouldn't have stood for that. Hell, most probably wouldn't have stood for mandatory OS activation via modem if Microsoft had required it.

Just want to point out that your scenario could not obtain because he App Store model depends on the Internet for distribution. Microsoft could not have strangled the web with an App Store for Windows because an App Store for Windows couldn’t exist without widespread internet adoption. And widespread internet adoption depended on the web.

No, I would be typing this on comp.hackernews on a tiny 300 KB native app instead.

But Apple has had a bunch of problems with crapware in their store. If they were actually vetting stuff, then I'd kind of agree, but as it stands, you are being limited on what you can do with your own device, but without the benefits. Their security feels a lot like the TSA: It's only there to give you warm fuzzies.

I agree that Android is worse, but that doesn't make Apple's store "Good".

Apple has crapware in the store, but the crapware can’t do the things that SpyPhone can on Android.

> I agree that Android is worse, but that doesn't make Apple's store "Good".

The apps on the store can be good or bad, I don’t care if Apple makes that judgement. I want iOS to limit what any app can do - which it does based on a much better security model.

Ah, I see what you mean, and yes, Apple has better permissions control.

As it turns out, giving the user ultimate control is really the best way to handle these types of things.

Windows is very different from iOS in that it had no sandbox and its API allowed developers to do everything they wanted. Users unknowingly granted admin privileges to every application they ran.

iOS, on the other hand, restricts its apps heavily - they are sandboxed, can't access other apps' files (no ransomware) and need explicit user permission to meddle with their private data.

Now, yes, exploits exist, but look at macOS - Apple still controls developer certificates and can pull the plug on misbehaving developers. An alternative to the app store wouldn't be nearly as devastating as win32.

You raise an interesting point about Android malware. Does it stem from the fact that Android apps can access the filesystem?

The biggest issue on Android is side loading and lack of updates.

Since Android 7, apps cannot any longer access filesystem outside their APK installation directory. All accesses must be done via SAF APIs.

> I well remember the state of Windows during Win 98 and XP where most had no idea what they were downloading, and it seemed every machine had malware, hidden pop ups and 37 IE toolbars. I was constantly asked to clean up friend's machines from the damage done by Kazaa and its associated garbage or some other drive-by crap.

I still prefer that personally than the crippled smartphones.

That's fantastic.

Some people agree with your views and there are products and software distributions in the market to satisfy them. Some people prefer the way Apple does things. Everyone's preferences are being catered for, and that is wonderful.

the crippled smartphones won the war, there's no real "usable" product for my preferences unfortunately :/.

Can you not install whatever app you want on an Android phone, as long as you enable sideloading in the settings?

I don't really want an app system, I would like a linux-like alternative where I can do a script to cat /dev/gps0 for example to record my location, or just ssh into my phone. I don't like at all the way Android is done.

Maybe I have my nostalgia lenses on, but I think I'd rather have the internet of kazaa era in terms of how things were working.

There were viruses? Yes. 37 IE toolbars? Of course! But consider for a moment what we have today instead: Instead of the simple and (comparatively) mostly harmless viruses we now have ransomware. Instead of kazaa installing spyware we have the OS itself trying to phone home. Instead of having a virus to delete random files, you now have one of the Big 4 delete stuff from your device without asking you.

You say we had crapware we had to avoid back then, I see that today we install the crapware ourselves and consider it a treat. Back then when you bought a piece of software you owned it. You didn't have micro transactions and DLCs and all these "innovations" that drive "engagement". You didn't have to have data connection to sync something with bluetooth.

Sure there were also some crappy things, but things are not all that better today. We just got used to it.

Huge nostalgia lenses. It was never that great, and besides there's no going back: the computing model of 15+ years ago simply wouldn't survive contact with the latest sophisticated strategies of malice and manipulation.

The reality is >95% of the population don't want to be, don't know how to be, or simply don't have the spare time to be the systems administrator for all of their technology. The computing model that Apple offers with iOS and the App Store is—in effect—the outsourcing of systems administration to a competent third party.

For most people this is not really any different to outsourcing the maintenance of your house to a cleaning service, or the maintenance of your car to a mechanic, or the minding of your children to a daycare provider. For most people the notion of "computing freedom" is not useful or helpful.

I'm the "computer help guy" for my extended family, and believe me, I am very thankful for Apple's approach because the amount of sysadmin-style assistance I've been asked to provide has absolutely plummeted. For many people who just want to browse the internet, an iPad is way better than a Windows PC. There are people in my family for whom I would fear for their bank accounts if they still used a Windows PC. I don't spend a moment's time worrying about the possibility of malware on their iPads.

I prefer sandmboxes, stores and containers than having to go through a pile of floppies with anti-virus and still be unsure of how safe they were.

As long as real computers don't go extinct, I can agree with this. I don't mind trusted computing; the problem is who owns the keys.

Better that a company like Apple holds the keys to my parents' iPads than my parents. Way better. Waaaaay better.

Yes, I agree with this. People who don't know or care should get devices that they don't have to manage themselves.

Personally I enjoy having the ability to write and run programs for the hardware I paid for without having to beg some company for their permission and blessing. As long as I always have that option, I don't mind.

Freedom is slavery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com