iPad Camera Multitasking
blog.thinktapwork.com
blog.thinktapwork.com
Otherwise, well, there goes your narrative of having a level playing field. The problem with this is, the loss of trust results in a slow, unending decay that only becomes obvious in retrospect.
It may not seem like it, but billions of dollars of value are at stake with little things like this. If you work at Apple, you should raise the alarm.
To note, the entitlement switching from private-only-zoom-is-in-the-loop to public-and-documented doesn’t mean that indie devs get access to it. Apple still will grant it to special friends only, and random indie devs can request but will just be rejected.
I see no documentation anywhere regarding this besides the Zoom forums. Thanks!
Or judging from comments on MacRumors and 9to5 or dozen of other Apple's focused website, Apple devices Apple rules, and this is a perfectly acceptable norm?
Yes.
Users buy the devices. They say "I allow Apple to choose what native code is allowed on this device" because of the benefits of doing so (being able to safely spend money, good UX, etc). They then are surprised when they can't run Fortnite since Epic wanted to use iOS without paying for it in the way Apple requires developers to. This is the downside of giving up that control, and it's up to consumers to make a choice on whether or not they buy an iPhone due to these pros and cons.
I don't think Apple needs to do what you suggest here to keep their narrative around the iOS App Store intact.
Would it hurt them so much to prompt for camera access the first time the app is started after installing it from the app store?
I found that extremely worrying as it means I can no longer trust the app store to provide a safe sandboxed environment. Suddenly there's an app with this special no-cam-permission entitlement and your mugshot is uploaded when you believed the ios camera permission system would have protected you.
Oh, but Apple would only ever grant that permission to its own apps? Better hope we'll never get a repeat of the PsychicPaper exploit!
Apparently it's a prosumer level app with quite a bit of power and depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI8SWCUWMDY
However I agree that it's strange not asking for camera permissions. The app itself can be used with no camera.
It's also strange because even apple's own watch app that tracks your hand washing habits keeps asking for permission to track your location. Every now and then you will be reminded that hand washing reminder app tracks your location.
Designing in such a huge hole in the permission system just makes it that much more difficult to trust it.
I don’t personally care about “level playing fields” but even if I did, I wouldn’t expect or want it to include the first party.
That changes the game completely!
You're conditioned to trust and think iOS and its app store has a permission system, so you can go crazy and download and install any app you want, safe in the knowledge they won't access your camera without your permission.
And then suddenly there's this magic nondescript app "Clips" in the same app store... that just bypasses the entire thing.
The real answer is probably that Clips is onloaded onto demo units at retail stores, and they don't want the first user to deny permission and prevent everyone else from using the app.
No, deleting a built-in app just deletes the icon. You can “re-install” a built-in app via the App Store even if you don’t have a network connection, because it never actually left your phone.
Seems kinda dumb to still tie them to OS updates tbh, especially for Safari. Every other browser is pushing updates a few times a month and Safari is what, a few times a year?
You’d have the dreaded combinatorial explosion of compatibility.
This means for me as a developer that it's hard to write software and tools for my own devices without having to deal with Apple in some way or root the devices. Some things are even clearly impossible because of these private entitlements: There is no way for me to explore the CarPlay API's to experiment with my own ideas.
A small part of me hopes that the Epic lawsuit and recent developments can lead to more abilities for sideloading on iDevices.
Sideloading/rooting an idevice as long as it can’t do Apple Pay/bypass find my iPhone is fine of course.
Correlation does not equal causation. There is a way to provide streamlined default experience without the control. The Mac has so far been an example. Everything under the sun is possible, but apple only paves the path they would prefer you take.
Another case (not saying it’s nefarious it was obviously an unintentional screw up) was if you had System Integrity Protection turned off an installed Chrome, it would render your Mac unusable. (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/no-it...)
Even Apple is not immune from screwing up on the Mac. A certain version of iTunes deleted users files if the hard drive name had a space in it.
Personally, I am very excited about the new iPad Pro, but I am holding on my order till WWDC, trying to find out whether Apple finally has an answer to what I can use this gorgeous device for and finally lifts some of the road blocks.
So yes, I do think a good amount of control can help building a quality environment and on the one side is responsible for all that is good on the iPhone/iPad platform. But also flaws in the execution by Apple are responsible for a lot of things which are exactly not good user experience. At a minimum, they should try hard at improving the developer experience. Limiting the ability of apps to access car play? For apps actually distributed, yes. For developers, who want to experiment with it, definitely not. Same with the discussed API in the article. There should be a clear path for developers to discover and access these entitlements.
All car manufacturers are very careful about what you are allowed to do on driver accessible controls on dashboard gadgets.
https://driving laws.aaa.com/tag/video-screens/
My car won’t even let you pair your phone to Bluetooth while you’re driving.
Even if it weren’t illegal, we live in a very litigious society.
Even if the contract then said the developer would have to reimburse Apple, how would Apple recoup a multi million dollar judgment from an unknown developer?
Epic actually made a case or suggestion for this all the way back in 2015. The App Store distribution doesn't need to tie with App Submission Compliance.
Offically suporting sideloading will lead to what we have on the Mac, an official app store that is barely used and compromises the security model and user experience for many major apps. If you give an official channel to bypass Apple policies people will use it for everything. A major part of the security model for example is a third-party (Apple) being able to nuke abusive apps. Also enforcing compliance with certain UI guidelines as the devices evolve keeps things very easy to use. Its possible to have some of the things for sideloaded apps but more difficult to control.
Similarly, I can choose iPhone over Android for many reason, that doesn't mean I suddenly agree with every feature/limit of iOS
But the iPad, man I really wish they would settle somewhere between the iPhone and the Mac. I can appreciate that it’s the primary computer for millions of people like my mum, so there still needs to be some coddling. But my iPad Pro is a really nice, capable device, and it’s a shame I can’t do anything useful with it purely because my job requires capabilities Apple doesn’t want to give! It would never be a replacement for my Mac, but being able to noodle on some side projects while I watch TV would be nice.
Maybe things will start to change now they’re putting the M1 in iPads? You can now spec out an iPad with 16GB RAM—if my best option for writing code is still streaming VS Code from a different machine that will be a sad joke.
I was recently looking into replacing Time Machine on my MBP (which has a tendency to corrupt over SMB) with APFS snapshots, synced to ZFS snapshots on my NAS.
Unfortunately, I quickly found that Apple has locked the relevant API (fs_snapshot_create) away behind a private entitlement, only to be granted to select backup software that abides by their rules.
It's gotten to the point that I want to "jailbreak" my laptop. Just give myself the ability to grant any entitlement, for local use only.
But companies, like governments, countries and people are not wholly good or bad. Companies don't think with a single mind, or act with a single voice by default. They're a flag waved by thousands of different people who each have a different background, different capabilities and who each make slightly different ethical and financial tradeoffs.
Google is a massive contributor to opensource. And they harvest vast amounts of user data. And they use far less of it for advertising targetting than they could, out of respect for their users. Google makes some of their most valuable IP - Android and Chrome - (mostly) opensource and open platforms. They suspend users' accounts for silly reasons, and have a bad habit of shuttering services people care about, to the point where I generally avoid new google products to prevent heartache.
Apple makes beautiful devices. And they do a good job caring about user privacy. And the iOS app store is a rent-seeking monopoly designed to maximise profit, where they pull crap like this. They have given the world llvm. And their design leadership invented the modern smartphone. Without them android might still be trying to emulate the blackberry.
Apple deserves praise for their privacy friendly technology. And they deserve criticism for how they run the app store. I see no contradiction there.
For example Apple tracks its user within App Store. Which is perfectly fine except their PR make its sounds like they dont.
This was out of market necessity. They likely wouldn't have open sourced either if they thought they could have dominated the market without it.
Moreover, with both of these products they're drip feeding more and more functionality into closed source appendages (e.g. google play services). Their end goal is likely to ensure that if they did de-open source the whole lot, it wouldn't be possible to just fork it.
Every major tech company open sources software that doesn’t impact its compatibility and encourages adoption of its platform.
Also, while I'm here, I still am not convinced of Apple's privacy dedication. The T2 chip was a joke for anyone familiar with PRNG generation or the actual exploits being patched with it, and they've refused to add E2E encryption to debatably the most important product in their lineup: iCloud. Furthermore, their collusion with PRISM and history in China leads me to believe that their statement "privacy is a human right" is all security theater. Apparently, it's only a human right if you don't live in a place where their government disagrees. Then Apple has to abide by their rules. And if they're happy to turn over information in China, there's nothing stopping them from colluding with the US to weaponize their information.
You can make tribal cynicism sound clever if you use complex enough arguments, and rely on enough obscure details. "Peh, Apple didn't give the world LLVM. They bought it out and made Chris Lattner into a sellout." But you have to heavily filter reality if you want to do this. And its suspicious when anyone hunts so hard for a particular conclusion. I mean, would LLVM be as successful without Apple? No. Did Apple fund LLVM massively? Yes. Did Apple opensource LLVM? Yeah; they did. But so what? There's a proprietary llvm binary shipped with xcode; therefore proof that apple is Machiavellian and evil? Therefore proof Apple is good and can do no wrong? No! Its complicated.
Trying to simplify the world into good guys and bad guys isn't clever. Its childish and boring; and it gets in the way of having the real adult conversation, where we look at the imperfect world as it actually exists and decide what we want. Not "Apple bad" but "Apple makes great products, and free markets are good. And the app review process is great. But on balance it would still be better for the economy as a whole if the app store had real competition - even if that would probably be worse for many iphone customers."
You can spot the people who think this way easily, because when you talk to them about stuff like this they sigh and name the ways in which their favorite solution would make some things worse. "Yeah, FB is probably terrible for our society. But also FB really does connect people in meaningful ways. I don't know how we would keep the good aspects of free market innovation and social media's shrinking of the world while also softening its negative effects on teenagers. But there have to be some real answers here. Maybe XXX".
My challenge to you is this: Name some things you respect about the "other team" (apple or whoever). What would you would do if you were king for a day, and have the power to pass any laws you want? How would you fix the ills you see in the world? What are the ways your fixes might backfire?
I respect Apple's dedication to to having a single unified experience across all of your devices. I'm glad they switched to a Unix-based operating system instead of the garbage that powered their previous machines. I think the Quartz window manager is one the most impressively designed pieces of contemporary software, and I'd kill someone for the chance to look at the source code.
My "King for a Day" changes at Apple would probably include pausing their ARM transition, potentially to use ARM and x86 as a differentiator between their "Air" and "Pro" lines, respectively. The patents for the latter ISA are expiring this year, meaning that Apple would be well withing their legal rights to sell a chip with all of the battery optimization of the 5nm node while also supplying a more complete and standard instruction set. I would stop the chase to "make the computer disappear" and instead seek to make the computer functionally seamless. The dedication to making thinner devices is sabotaging their lifespan and usability. Plenty of other machines opt to add extra room to accommodate for a better keyboard, better webcam or more ports, and I gotta say I prefer it. I'd much rather carry around my 5 year old Thinkpad than my M1 Macbook Air, if solely for the reason that the former has RJ45 and SD card slots.
I don't really see any way that it could backfire, though I'm sure abandoning the M1 devices would cause a little initial friction. Apple could easily cart out a new "L1" chip that ships as an APU with the M1's CPU and GPU architecture onboard. Once people see that it's just as fast (if not faster for industry applications), people won't care.
In closing, I don't think Apple is the bad guy. But I'm far from convinced that they're the good guy, or even a morally grey participant. Their historic greed and botched engineering continues to make a mockery of their legacy, and it's a shame when many of the engineers involved are genuinely talented people. If Apple wants my respect, they should respect the input of the open source community trying to make package managers with Apple-level integration, or the right to repair community who's trying to make sure that the Mac lives as long as it can.
But does Apple have the competence on security to fulfill that care? There are also a lot of evidence to support that the answer is no.
Is this a joke?
Anyways, the entitlement Uber had was one thing, it'd be another if they had passed approval while using the entitlement. Afaik it was used for an Apple Watch demo. No one ever found evidence of its use in the main app.
It wasn't an entitlement for recording a screen, it was an entitlement for low level graphics access that could then be abused to do so.
Had they actually used the entitlement to record screens it'd be one thing, and I take exception with unfair treatment of devs like this, but please. Actually implying Apple has taken 100x the steps of their nearest competitor to maintain privacy on the most used computing devices...
Apple is not doing the best for us, but compared to the alternative (Google), it's less worse.
It looks unfair, but Apples goal isn’t to be idealistically fair, but to keep iOS a good experience to users.
For every good use of a feature there’s an abuse case.
This is nothing more than apple giving themselves and their preferred partners an unfair advantage - somewhat in opposition to Tim Cooks recent statement on developer equality.
They were also (among other well known apps) caught snooping clipboard contents. That’s not something you do accidentally.
What else... reinstalling themselves after you remove them?
That’s 3 anti-user practices I can think of off the top of my head - no doubt there are more.
In the past [1] they'd "(ab)use preinstallation scripts, manually unpack the app using a bundled 7zip and install it to /Applications if the current user is in the admin group (no root needed)."
ah yes, the notoriously well behaved facebook and tiktok
It also gives more to the users - the feature is available in apps most of them use.
Also this will be unpopular opinion but I don’t consider Apple giving themselves features an unfair advantage. Apple obviously trusts itself more than some random dude with a Mac mini.
I really don’t see how you can view this behaviour as anything other than an unfair advantage. By all means let them level the field by not using private apis themselves.
And more importantly, when you are asked about it publicly, don’t lie about it.
Once you make an API public, you have to support it for the foreseeable future. It’s much easier to work with one or two trusted third parties.
When I was working for a small company that sold access to our APIs, we would test it internally first, then a few partners. Then make it available to all of our customers.
Even Epic admitted that it got special treatment from Apple and was able to test and recommend features before they were made public.
[1] I work at AWS. All opinions are my own….
Even giving those "preferred" developers advance notice of upcoming features isn't treating them the same as other developers. I really don't see how you can think otherwise.
No developer should be under the expectation that they are going to have the same level of access to Apple engineers as someone from Microsoft, Adobe, or Epic.
So what you’re saying, is that when the platform serves as a gatekeeper it’s unfair? That’s what I’m hearing.
Either the market is manipulated, or it's not - there is no third option.
Anyway, if this is all normal amd legal, why do they lie about it?
Apple is just as much a company full of little people and groups as probably any company is. And despite some things seeming really polished, others are operating by the seat of their pants, with a just-released feature that they're working the bugs out of. A team of developers who have some library that they didn't fully document yet, or are supporting on an email basis.
Just like whatever open-source project or team you might know, if you raise some legitimate need, are not a crackpot weird user, are important in some other way, and know how to contact the right person, they can probably help you. It's just that it's big Apple, so there are some hurdles to doing that.
Is it odd to realize that if a big company / user group raises an issue, it's likely to get some legitimate attention versus a curious bystander just randomly asking what this API is, with no promise of why they need the info? Don't you treat meetings at work and random requests similarly, with some judgement of credibility of the asker in mind?
Just like a company is not probably "evil" and out trying to get you -- it's probably 1-2 people who are responsible for something and its fix. And whether the company enables that to happen tells you what the outcome will likely be. It even holds true for a place like the IRS.
More often than not, there is someone who knows your issue and who you can contact to figure it out. If you provide enough coherent information and understand that it's worth their time to help fix, and find the right channel.
There are many un-fair things with Apple's apps and some valued ones. I believe eventually this will get back at Apple.
Nothing to do with "fairness", simply a way of rolling out public APIs.
https://devforum.zoom.us/t/video-camera-not-working-in-split...
And it's odd how they expect that someone integrating with the API will just be able to use it.
I suspect that people imagine Zoom getting a privilege due to their inartistic value but I don't think that this is the case. I think that it's just a business and there's no reason why you can't have it with Apple too.
I imagine, engineers in Zoom needed this to accomplish something and they told the management. The management contacted Apple management and explained them how this could work well both for Apple and Zoom and promised not doing nasty stuff. Apple trusted Zoom enough to open or implement that feature for them. Maybe Apple have seen the the need of this API, developed it and contacted Zoom to give it a try.
Why wouldn't they open it for everybody? Probably edge cases that can be worked out on 1:1 partnership but need good design when open to everyone.
It's just business. What would have annoyed me though is if a competitor like Skype request access in similer terms but got denied.
For some reason, the narrative on HN and similar tech heavy forums require us to pretend that business relationships don't exist or that business relationships are dirty elitist entities that you can't have. A lot of people can be surprised how much you can have by just asking to have it or proposing something that can work for everyone. Maybe that's the dirty secret of the non-technicals :)
In many ways, it's already the case. Browsers are already possible through partnerships with companies that manage certificates, DNS and so on. They also have special APIs that are open only to the vendor. You can't spin off your authoritative DNS or certificate authority or malicious site detection and have it made accepted by Firefox/Chrome or others.
On the other hand, we have an understanding about what web is and expectations about the web standards which makes me to expect neutrality. It's the tool that promises me to parse whatever HTML I throw at it and execute any JS.
Then we have things like Brave browser that has API that's not of any standards.
So, I don't know. It depend. I will know it when I see it.
Just remember, the first iPhone did not have an AppStore or SDK. People made apps for it anyway.
People also often confuse the right for access to Apple's app distribution services with the right to run apps on their own device. In reality, you can have a torrent client or anything you want on your phone without asking Apple for permission. That doesn't mean that it's going to be as easy as installing it from AppStore though. You will need to thinker harder.
I also like how Apple is the opinionated elitists design house. As long as they are not the dominant force in this space, I'm fine with them doing things their way.
I see some people argue that Apple is dominant and everything changes when Apple does something but that's simply because Apple is really great at designing it. There are also many thing that Apple does and then doesn't stick. It's the stuff that they simply fail to design well.
It's good to have someone around that doesn't race to the bottom and have opinions on how things should be made.
And this is the case not only with Apple, but with 99% of all devices out there. Developers get access only to what manufacturer gives them right to, and this is how it should be.
If you make some device no one should force you to open it up or give everyone access to it. This is your own product, you should be able to control who access what, otherwise it is not yours by definition.
Have you noticed that when every big tech company announces a new product they already have testimonials about how well the product works?
Is this fodder for new discovery in the Epic lawsuit?
Due to the nature of that case, can Apple be compelled to provide information on this and all other non-public entitlements along with and who they are granted to and why?
Is it reasonable to presume that Zoom was under an NDA on this, and it was an employee mistake bringing it up by name?
It also came out in testimony that Epic asked for special deals with Apple.
(Source: we use this entitlement at our company)
We know Apple gives testing priority to certain developers, they mention it at practically every presentation they do. Granted those are usually for NDA’d features for making demo-only apps.
Now it would be interesting to automatically download all the popular app every update and find private entitlements.
As an example of how zealous Apple is about keeping apps encrypted; they even disable iOS app support entirely on M1 Macs if you've unlocked the hardware for third-party or modified operating systems: https://twitter.com/never_released/status/139070741193000140...
I’d say give more control to Apple.
The "kill everything" approach to keep battery life is just a band aid and more often than not just ruining someone's experience. I've heard sooo many stories of people using fitness trackers on ios that stops working in the middle of a run, for instance.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/05/uber-removing-apple-gra...
The linked article states that it was granted to render map on old Apple Watch.
Also I doubt Apple wants to turn the UI into a Morse code sequence to be deciphered by users.
How many finger and swipe combinations are there with the home button, or trackpad?
When the app is in overlay mode, there is a bar at the top with the grabber, the icon could go on it as well.
There's enough space, and bars.
Apple probably decided that was safe enough only if the app has been through some extra review to ensure it has a clear UI so the user understands they are still streaming video somewhere.
It’s always been a limitation on iOS.
https://twitter.com/cbseveningnews/status/128854230760894054...