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Comment by pandatigox | Hacker News Reader

After reading miki123211's comment and doing some further research, I am peeved at the article's blatant bias to portray Apple negatively. The developers knew that they were circumventing the rules, as shown Apple's response, but pretend to be the victims and complain that they can't understand Apple's feedback.

I suppose this also goes back to the bigger picture in society. We have been trained to root for the underdogs, while the faceless corporation is always to blame. Apple has been consistent in its effort to make iOS secure, but public opinion keeps changing depending on whether it causes them an inconvenience. When Apple refuses to comply with the FBI, Apple good. When Apple removes apps that violate privacy and weakens security, Apple bad.

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I agree that we need a full and complete understanding rather than a simplistic one. miki123211's response adds to that, but a fuller picture is that

- companies were using IOS to serve a legitimate need that Apple did not.

- As noted this was done by subverting an API

- Apple tolerated this (did they not know or not care or ?)

- Apple released a competitive product with a new API

- Apple begins removing products using the old methods

The question is whether Apple is allowing existing products to migrate to the new API or are they locked out? If existing products cannot use the same API then my sense is that Apple is indeed being anti-competitive.

“Competitive product”?

I’m sorry but they released a real solution and then started to remove the anti-privacy hacks. Also people don’t seem to understand so I’ll spell it out: APPLE IS LOSING MONEY FROM THIS DECISION. Screen time makes them no money (yes you can argue maybe they make more money from devices because of its existance but that’s a stretch).

I’m betting they put up with these apps because they realized there was no good alternative. Now they they have a real solution there is no reason to allow there privacy nightmares to continue to exist (in their current form at least).

Apple’s competitive product (namely, Screen Time) has no API. It’s a system level feature that no third-party app has access to.

Which is not a fact of nature, but a decision that Apple made.

Is it impossible to believe that was a legitimate security decision? How would you implement such an API and prevent developers from abusing it for spyware purposes? Personally, even though I opt into sharing app-specific usage data with developers, I don’t particularly want my global device-level usage statistics available to any random app that also has network entitlements.

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