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Comment by cmcd | Hacker News Reader

with regards to the App Store being the only way to get apps on iOS

The App Store is the only Apple supported way to release apps, there are unsupported third party app stores as well. Lack of transparency is not good, but I'm not sure what the issue is with there being only one officially supported way to download apps.

It is Apple's product and software, they are selling the "Apple Experience" as much as the hardware. Having a single store with strict guidelines and QC helps to ensure the most consistent experience.

If you only care about using the hardware how you see fit you can JailBreak and get access to almost anything. You take the same risks you would if there were other, easier to access, unsupported ways to download unmoderated apps.

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Apple would very much like that there was no way to jailbreak your device. It's not like they've purposefully left an "out" to install unauthorized software.

As someone who owns an iPhone and recommends iPhones to older family members with a wide spectrum of computer literacy, I'm very glad about that.

If you want freedom buy an Android.

There are always reasons that companies want to keep their monopolies. But the fact that "Apple Experience" is something important to Apple should not be the end of discussion. The negative aspects should be evaluated as well.

I'm not saying I am in favor of how locked down iOS is currently, but you have to admit it does create the safest mobile environment especially for less technical people.

Apple is selling a product in which they have not decided to include a way to easily download unsupported Apps. I do not think it is the government's role to tell Apple they have to allow a easy way for users to install Apps from different channels.

It is very much the role of the government to watch monopolies and act if necessary. Even if that means passing arbitrary restrictions on their business practices.

Surely not all conceivable restrictions would be good, but some (like GDPR) are clearly net positives.

The question is whether or not Apple's control over iOS counts as a monopoly for this purpose -- do you look at iOS products as their own self-contained market, or do you look at them as "the mobile device market" that includes Android (and, at least on tablets, Windows and ChromeOS)? You can make an argument for that either way.

(Personally, I wouldn't be heartbroken if Apple was forced to allow apps to be installed outside the App Store and to not require all in-app purchases to go through them -- I think that would actually end up being healthier for the platform in the long run, especially if they're serious about positioning it as a general purpose computing platform rather than an "application console" -- but I'm not at all sure American antitrust regulators will see it that way.)

One might argue that forcing you to use their app store constitutes illegal tying. The iPhone could easily be made to run apps from competing stores (as is possible with Android). Don't think about competitors that do exist on other platforms (like Play Store), but instead think of competitors that were never allowed to exist on iOS.

It's not an implausible argument! It's already been successfully argued that "jailbreaking" is legal. I just don't know how easy the argument would be to make, and what the counterarguments would be; it's hard to think of any very good precedent for this. (Nintendo's old "lockout chips" are the closest I can think of, maybe?)

Jailbreaking is legal because you purchased the hardware and can use it as you please. This is very different from compelling companies to develop and support channels for installing third party software.

Well, that's the other side of the argument, right? Apple has developed most or all of the technical underpinnings for this already, as demonstrated by the ability to do enterprise provisioning and install apps through TestFlight. It wouldn't require an amazing engineering feat for them to bring a version of Gatekeeper to iOS that let you install signed applications from anywhere, not just their app store -- the plumbing is basically already in place. The question is really whether there's a legal case for that.

While I've generally come down more on your side of that argument in the past, I'm not longer quite so sure; Apple's control over the iOS app ecosystem as things are now has no precedent in the history of computing I'm aware of, and I could certainly see a plausible case made that this control does ultimately harm consumers by making it effectively impossible to install non-Apple-sanctioned software on iOS devices. Both "if you didn't want to accept that you shouldn't have bought an iOS device" and "but you can technically jailbreak the device if you find a way Apple hasn't cut off yet" are plausible defenses, too, but neither one seems to me like a legal slam-dunk.

I do not think you can say Apple has a monopoly over iOS as it is a product not a market. Would be equivalent to saying Tesla has a monopoly over Tesla infotainment software, ignoring that they are only a small part of the larger automobile market.

Looking at the overall phone market Apple has around 50% share in the US but only 20% globally. This is not high enough to constitute a monopoly especially when there are clearly competitors in the space.

> I do not think you can say Apple has a monopoly over iOS as it is a product not a market. Would be equivalent to saying Tesla has a monopoly over Tesla infotainment software

That is an absurd comparison, Apple is one of a duopoly, there are only two mobile app marketplaces, thus, iOS is a market.

Tesla has a larger share of the electric car market in the US than Apple has of the mobile phone market. Claiming that Apple has a monopoly over the App Store is just as unreasonable as claiming Tesla has a monopoly over the Apps installed on their cars.

The App Store is a feature of iOS devices, if Apple decided they no longer wanted an App Store they could remove it entirely. It is not reasonable to require Hardware and Software vendors to support third party Applications to run on their systems. Vendors that do support this functionality sell it as a feature of their product, but this should not be a expectation.

> Tesla has a larger share of the electric car market in the US than Apple has of the mobile phone market.

You are comparing a tiny subset of the car market with the entire smartphone market. A more proportional comparison would be electric-car market vs feature-phone market.

> The App Store is a feature of iOS devices, if Apple decided they no longer wanted an App Store they could remove it entirely.

No, they couldn't, it would kill the iPhone... Removing apps from a tesla? maybe it would make some people unhappy, but it still functions as a car, as far as a car is concerned it is ancillary.

Availability of apps, programs etc beyond the vendors creations are a critical function to any computer platform that is not single use - Isn't this obvious? Do you really think the value of iPhones to the majority of it's users are merely as a more advanced feature phone?

The primary reason for the single Apple supported AppStore is platform control and by that I mean they can control quality, security, content (remember Steve Jobs said he wasn't making a product for people to stream PORN on) and the type of apps that are permitted. This is a big part of the brand.

> The App Store is the only Apple supported way to release apps, there are unsupported third party app stores as well.

On iOS, these are nothing more than hacks.

Right, third party app stores are not officially supported and for good reason. I am not sure what the alternative is, create a unmoderated free for all app store? That goes pretty heavily against the Apple ecosystem's philosophy and would make it easy for people to download damaging apps which Apple would then get blamed for because they added an official channel for installing them.

> and would make it easy for people to download damaging apps which Apple would then get blamed for because they added an official channel for installing them.

Do Android users blame Google or the phone manufacturer when they download a damaging app?

Yes they do, the most recent example is apps using a vulnerability to steal images. Many people are blaming Google and Samsung for not addressing this problem sooner and of course having a faulty permissions system that allowed this in the first place. Samsung is frequently attacked for security issues since they take so long to push out updates. Apple avoids these problems entirely by sandboxing apps and thoroughly reviewing functionality before accepting. It is very rare to hear about security issues for iOS yet we hear about a new one for Android monthly.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/11/19/google-c...

> It is very rare to hear about security issues for iOS yet we hear about a new one for Android monthly.

This exploit existed in the wild for iOS for years[1], and all a user had to do is visit a website for their device to be exploited.

There are plenty of other recent exploits found in the wild for iOS[2][3]. This implant is undetectable and uploaded iOS users' photos and location data to the attackers[4].

All four of these iOS exploits were found in the same month.

[1] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/jsc-exploits....

[2] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-wild-ios-e...

[3] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-wild-ios-e...

[4] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/implant-teard...

Not having adequate permissions or timely updates isn't the same as being mad at Google because they manually enabled a malicious app.

The alternative has been functional for decades.

You have a single "store" interface with user configurable channels which users can add at their own risk.

If you don't make it trivial for an attacker to induce a user to configure such a channel you avoid most bad outcomes for stupid people. For example you shouldn't be able to click a link and prompt the user as such prompts do not work.

Personally I would expect

- A setting in configuration menus to enable 3rd party channels

- explicitly entering the channel data

- a white list of known safe channels run by good actors even if not reviewed

- a black list of known bad channels that can't be enabled

It’s always trivial for an ‘attacker’ to induce a user to configure a bad channel.

Those ‘attackers’ will be the same media outlets who encouraged people to Jailbreak in the early days, or Google and Facebook using their respective monopolies to blanket advertise.

> Unmoderated free for all app store

I think we should call it Android. Given that, and a lack of a closed ecosystem, is why Android is hacked as much as it is, which is why I would never get rid of my iPhone in favor of an Android device - well, that and the lesser quality hardware, of course. But I think you see my point.

> well, that and the lesser quality hardware, of course.

As an Apple user, I don't say this very often, but you're seriously drinking the Kool-Aid here. Neither mobile OS has a significant advantage in hardware quality at the high end.

Yeah, this might have been true several years ago but these days you can get Androids with the same specs as iPhones at half the price.

That’s just not true. Apple actively works to prevent jailbreaks and there are often multi-year periods where no publicly released jailbreak exists for particular phones. When one does appear, Apple patches it as quickly as possible—for good reason I should add because jailbreaks work by exploiting security vulnerabilities.

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