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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry but as a user, I trust my relationship with Apple more than I trust random third party devs.

As a user, I want Apple to lock down the system and make things hard for developers.

As a developer, I empathize with my perspective as a user and build products that take this into account.

As a user, I want my system to use containerization for me to not worry about where I get my apps from. You know, like Flatpak does it. This isn't really an argument for modern OSes such as desktop Linux anymore.

Containers are not a magic shield that protects you from all attacks. You should still be wary of what you're running even with the additional protection they offer.

For example - https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2019/q1/119

> Containers are not a magic shield that protects you from all attacks.

Nor are manual reviews by Apple staff...

Sure, but I’m not going to let perfect be the enemy of good. Could the review process be improved? Absolutely! But I’ll take some review over no review any day of the week.

I'd rather take my review from someone other than Apple then.

They could be (and are on Illumos and FreeBSD) if only they were designed with that from the start. Linux has always made the mistake of not designing things to be safe and secure from the outset (cgroups/namespaces, btrfs, etc.).

BSD is also an application desert compared to GNU/linux. It's always going to be a scale between user desires and security needs. BSD is rock solid but moves glacially slow. Most devs need more speed than that. Most users demand it. There's a reason despite the elitist attitude the Arch Illuminati take that people want Arch. It's a really stable bleeding edge release.

I assume you're talking about desktop applications? If so, I don't think the advantages of containerization really apply like they do on the server side.

well that took all of 1 minute:

https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-1087

apt-get and yum and pacman and the rest do not enforce containerization.

No, but they get their software from a trusted central authority (unless you choose to trust a third party repo and add it manually).

Just like Apple Store ? (except the part where you can add 3rd party stores)

The apps there can't be vetted by others who want to (like they can for apt etc.). The incentives are totally different: Apple Store is commercial, and Apple takes 30%, hence the part about taking your choices away.

Apple takes 30%, so it’s in their best interest to push as many apps through as possible, yet the process is notoriously difficult. This shows you their motivation is in the right place. A third party can be bought (see Amazon paid reviews) to push something through. We’ve also seen cases in these public, but “vetted”, repos where bad code was pushed without being caught until after the fact (see NPM leftpad)

The article is about the Mac App Store. You can have third party app stores on the Mac.

Which is why some distros like Ubuntu are moving to replace them.

Not entirely, Flatpak is not intended for the base system, only for applications. Snap is AFAIK but probably not because Canonical wants to sandbox the OS from itself.

snap and flatpak certainly enforce sandboxing.

As a user, I avoid Apple products as much as I can.

I never liked MacOS; Macintosh's charm, which was its UI, went away when I got my Amiga.

I also never liked the iPhone, because a) it's terribly overpriced, b) I don't want a walled garden.

I survived all these years in the raw PC market with no one holding my hand. I don't need a walled garden.

Of course, that's my strictly personal preference.

That's basically like saying you prefer to live under a totalitarian regime than a democracy because: security. Humans gladly trade their freedom for security as your comment implies, you are comfortable with that.

The web is, or at least was in part, a democracy. Apple is clearly a dictatorship.

Trust doesn't really come into it. You trust your user data to 3rd parties every single day using apps that very publicly compromise you like FB, Google etc. So to say that you trust your relationship with Apple doesn't mean squat. Sure Apple is good at preventing people from breaking into your iPhones, but it's not good at stopping Facebook from selling your data to 3rd parties which you talk about. Your security is already compromised.

In the days even before the web we had many programs from independent 3rd parties that have now turned into household names today.

I refuse to believe that Apple's incredibly convoluted App store is the way forward. I ultimately believe Apple will fail here and have to make major changes, indeed I hope it does.

It’s more like saying they want to live in a society with rules and regulations which are enforced rather than a Wild West ultra liberal free market economy.

> That's basically like saying you prefer to live under a totalitarian regime than a democracy

Horrible analogy - the App Store is not "life" it's business. We deal with demanding, undemocratic platforms in business all the time.

The way forward is the open web. I support that and there's room for both.

This is an absurd comparison that makes zero sense on the face of it.

People don’t give up any freedom when they choose Apple products.

It’s a feature of a democracy that you can decide to contract any third parties you like to carry out professional services - such as verifying software quality, or protecting the privacy of your data.

Anyone who doesn’t like Apple’s services can simply buy Android, which explicitly offers openness as a differentiator.

The comparison between a managed software store and an authoritarian regime makes no sense at all precisely because you can leave.

The software company behind the original posting has chosen to leave.

Presumably you have chosen to leave or never enter.

The only authoritarians in this scenario are the people who wish to use government power to deny others the right to choose the service Apple provides.

I want things sandboxed for sure but I definitely don't want to be forced to use App Store. In reality App Stores are bad, too much enforced centralization. Takes the power out of the user's hands.

> In reality App Stores are bad, too much enforced centralization.

This holds for any kind of store, from supermarkets to Amazon.

What's the alternative?

Competition.

The alternative to businesses that sell things is competition?

I'm guessing this isn't what you meant, but the endgame of "Apple, please make things hard for developers" is there's no apps left for you to use that aren't made by Apple, because they made it too hard for developers.

A balance has to be struck somewhere. Developers increasingly do not like where Apple is placing the balance (generally on the side of 'go screw yourself, time to rework your app for our latest guideline and API changes, also buy some new hardware to run the latest xcode')

Xcode has generally supported the two newest macOS releases, with its current minimum OS being Mojave, which supports Macs from 2012 and if you pick up a $50 GPU upgrade, even 2010 Mac Pro’s. Almost all of those same Macs will be supported when Catalina becomes the new minimum.

This doesn’t seem all that onerous. If you’re stuck on a Mac that’s a decade old for some reason all it’ll take to be able to develop again is picking up a $150-$200 Mac mini or iMac on eBay/Craigslist.

Large majority of Apple users do not need anything else than what Apple already made.

Which is why the store makes so little of their money right? Your opinion is directly against their profit data.

Yep. As an android user and ex apple fanboy, I very much miss the relative safety of the iOS app store.

Well you can always go back. Just make sure you can afford it and all the dongles you'll need.

I'll go back when their hardware is beautiful again and when offline Spotify lands on Apple watch.

Not if you actually want to own your device (have root).

That's a simplistic view. Apple can impose their political views upon you that you didn't agree with when you bought the device (see the current HK Map debacle). Their leadership could change. They can and will ban Apps that are not a threat at all.

You stance also implies that there's no way Apple could allow sideloading in a safe way (real sideloading not their 7 day and/or paid cert crap). I already need to contact Apples servers to unlock my phone, I would be fine if I had to unlock my device with Apple to allow sideloading. And since this is becoming more of a free market and free speech issue, I hope lawmakers will fix this problem.

As I understand AppStore is mutual platform. It should be beneficial to both user and devs.

Doesn't the freedom and Android allow for you to trust a secure app store? I know that Playstore has its issues but it still has their barrier to entry and is patrolled by Google's app security team. Alternatively, there could even be a more secure app store established with even higher vetting. This is in contrast to Apple's store where you're either comfortable with their balance of security/hassle or you're not.

> I'm sorry but as a user, I trust my relationship with Apple more than I trust random third party devs.

I don't see any reason why one would trust Apple more than a random third party dev. To me they are one and the same.

16 years of managing personal information and credit card details of 100’s of millions of people. Without any known data breach.

And no marketing spam from third parties since Apple doesn't sell your information.

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