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Comment by kevincox | Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting to create a TODO app, get that published. Then slowly add workflow programming features that make it turing complete. At some point you need to add the ability to share workflow rules with other users.

Then you slowly add support for a proper programming language instead of only offering the UI configuration.

See at which point your app becomes an interpreter of data and configuration which can come from the internet into an interpreter of code. Because there is of course really no sharp line. I'm sure there are dozens of turning complete apps that can download configurations from the internet.

Although at the end of the day you are just seeing when the company decides to apply vague policies to swat you out of their ecosystem.

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WeChat is practically running its own OS inside of iOS and Apple is okay with it. It has its own app store and while they are web apps the WeChat API provides a lot of native integrations that makes them feel less like web apps.

I'm not an iOS dev but I believe that it also uses some weird iOS APIs that I've never seen other apps use. The way it makes your phone continuously vibrate with certain notifications is one example.

As long as WeChat is the only messaging app allowed in the PRC, it will be able to get away with far more than any other app. It doesn't make any sense to compare niche productivity tools to it.

> It doesn't make any sense to compare niche productivity tools to it.

It makes complete sense to compare because Apple likes to claim that it imposes its rules and guidelines perfectly uniformly.

Growing up in the early 00s, software used APIs without fear of rules being imposed after the fact, and without needing to become arbitrarily successful in an authoritarian regime the OS & hardware manufacturers deemed a key market.

There were also piles and piles of viruses, malware, and Adware.

I'm not defending this particular frustration of iOS App Store policy. But it's worth recognizing that there is a balancing act going on here. Apple and Google are in the difficult position of trying to balance reasonable security policy with people's freedom to use their phones as they want.

If there is a happy medium between where Word Processors are also virus vectors and the walled gardens we have now, I don't think anyone has found it.

There are lots of programming environments on iOS with sharing. I had gambit installed, there's pythonista which even has special support from official Apple apps like shortcuts. I'm pretty sure there were multiple C interpreters.

Apple stopped enforcing the no interpreters rule for years until just now. I honestly can't imagine going back to having the list of approved software for one of my most important computers dictated by a publicly traded company. I'm shocked other people tolerate it!

> I honestly can't imagine going back to having the list of approved software for one of my most important computers dictated by a publicly traded company. I'm shocked other people tolerate it!

Because it isn't the most important computer for many (probably most) people - it's their phone/entertainment device and it does what they want; any semblance of it being a general purpose computer was never there.

I used to think this way as well, as for me, the phone is just a thing that's somewhat useful but definitely not my main compute device. Within the past couple of years though I have seen where the smart phone is the only compute device a person (family) may have. No internet connection at home, so data is only available via phone. I was shocked at how prevalent this actually is.

Plenty of people have iPhones or iPads and use them as general-purpose computers. If they don't, it's mostly for ergonomic reasons than software restrictions (most people probably don't want to sit in front of an 11-inch iPad for 8 hours a day).

Maybe the answer is just that most people don't care as much as nerds on HN do.

It looks like they haven't stopped. They just are continuing to enforce it as they please.

Maybe they should just remove the app store guidelines completely and replace it with "Apple will allow apps that it finds beneficial to its interests."

Wait they are killing Pythonista and Scriptable? ;-(

Look at Drafts - it has all that, and supports JavaScript.

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