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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

What we really need is an open platform on iOS for app stores, so that Facebook can launch or partner with a third party store that provides built in APIs to enable bypassing Apples restrictions. Maybe Facebook could make their app exclusive to it, so hundreds of millions of users are drawn to an App Store sub-platform subsidised by intrusive, data scraping, privacy compromising policies. Win!

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Why are you assuming that app stores get to provide access to private data? I would expect that apps from any app store are just as sandboxed as the ones from Apple's.

They need to be able to communicate with the store, which needs to be able to provide services such as iAP, background update, reviews and recommendations and whatever else the store provider wants to offer. This is how Google Play store works right now on Android, so this is not theoretical, and you'd bet Google would want a store on iOS and they'd want it to provide the same services Play Store provides on Android.

Apple Store apps might well be sandboxed from third party store apps, but there are no guarantees apps within a store ecosystem would provide the same privacy, that would be up to the store provider and Apple would have no say in it.

If a third party could provide an equivalent to Apple's tracking ID, they'd already be able to do that with a library. Having a different app store has absolutely no effect on this issue whatsoever.

It does because Apps have to be able to communicate with their store, and that could enable bridging between apps which breaks the sandbox. It's all up to the store provider, see more detailed reply in parallel comment.

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