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Comment by vbsteven | Hacker News Reader

This is what bothers me most about Apple devices and software. They probably have the "best" devices out there in terms of user experience. I use an iPhone and iPad every day because of it. But they keep very tight control over what software can be installed and run on it in order to safeguard their views on UX and security/privacy.

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.

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The tight control over what the software can do is a big part of what makes apple devices have such a good user experience. Even as a power user/SWE/tinkerer I hope that does not change because I want my daily driver devices to be as reliable and zero config as they can be.

Sideloading/rooting an idevice as long as it can’t do Apple Pay/bypass find my iPhone is fine of course.

> The tight control over what the software can do is a big part of what makes apple devices have such a good user experience.

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.

And the Mac has cases like Zoom installing a back door web server so even when you deleted the app, it could reinstall itself.

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.

I have to agree and disagree. Yes, it is good that not every app has root rights, that you have a reasonable expectation of security and some level of quality assessment. However, at the same time Apple fails dramatically at keeping bad or even nefarious apps out of the app store. And in a lot of places, user experience is outright horrible because of the restrictions. Have you ever tried to move music from files to the music app? You can't. So I have music on my iPhone I basically cannot play. Same for videos. And a lot of data handling is awkward at least. With all their power through the App Store, Apple should insist that all apps which have some sort of local data also support the files app. That all apps which play video properly support picture in picture (most don't or differently). Not to mention, that there isn't even the most basic, even if completely sandboxed, shell application. In this context I can only praise "Working Copy", which works really great in giving apps git access.

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.

Can you imagine the shit show that would happen if a developer installed a video playing app on his own CarPlay device and he got in accident?

All car manufacturers are very careful about what you are allowed to do on driver accessible controls on dashboard gadgets.

It'd be only the driver's fault, not anyone else's. How is this any different from playing a video from the phone and either holding it, or putting it on the dash?

Because it is illegal in most states.

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.

If there is an actual security risk, availability of those APIs could be tied to signing the necessary contracts which make the developer accept the liability. But we were discussing the special API used by zoom. No safety risk here.

There is a privacy risk. Apple can’t make the developer accept liability. A contract between Apple and a developer is not going to stop Apple from being sued.

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?

>Sideloading/rooting an idevice as long as it can’t do Apple Pay/bypass find my iPhone is fine of course.

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.

I think my preference would be that hardware manufacturers should give the ability to boot other operating systems. Then if people want to run their own software they can without forcing someone else’s OS to fit them. Then there can be no more arguments about not owning your own device, run what you want on it. Consoles, phones, laptops whatever.

We are just used to this for “computers” because of how the industry evolved but it really is the exception and not the norm if you think about it. Even for early cell phones and pdas most ran their own OS and didn’t seperate the hardware and software layers.

I disagree but will likely get downvoted on HN as this communtiy does not really reflect the huge set of customers Apple is building these devices for. The Mac is for us. iDevices still for the most part target a broad swath of users (despite the pro moniker) and have to be easy to use and as secure as possible.

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.

Android allows side loading and there are at least 10 3rd party app stores. And yet the Google Play store is the main player. So there's zero evidence that allowing side loading would turn the iOS App Store (top store) into the Mac App store (barely used)

The thing that bothers me is that it's not even restricted to iDevices.

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.

I care less about the iPhone because I’m never going to do real work on it. It’s my everywhere computer and my emergency computer, there’s a benefit to there being absolutely nothing anyone can feasibly do to fuck it up.

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.

If it's your own hardware and app, what's wrong with just sideloading it using a dev cert?

Dev certs won't give you access to private entitlements

I'm not an iOS dev, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these specifically App Store entitlements? So if you try to submit an app using an API covered by one without having been granted permission to it, that request will fail, but if you're just building and running on your own hardware you can use any private API you feel like?

Not the way it works. On non-jailbroken iOS, entitlements are enforced at the kernel level. If your app is signed with an entitlement that isn’t listed in the provisioning profile (which only Apple can generate with its private key), the system rejects the binary. It’s the same on Mac, but you can disable amfi to get rid of that shit, which used to also be possible on jailbroken iOS.

Huh. Thanks; I stand corrected. The last time I messed with iOS development was years ago, and you could sign and deploy whatever you wanted locally. I forget if it required a developer account then, but definitely not a paid one.

I assume you mean locally on the simulator. On device, it has been as I described since iPhone OS 2.0.

We have over a decade of data and experiences with this Sandboxed approach. The fact that you still use an iPhone/iPad over Android means you are tacitly agreeing with the approach.

No it doesn't. Example: Someone votes democrat because they want to support public schools doesn't mean they support every democrat policy.

Similarly, I can choose iPhone over Android for many reason, that doesn't mean I suddenly agree with every feature/limit of iOS

You can use CarPlay simulator for development without being enrolled into the program.

"A good user experience" and "not being able to do with your device as you please" are incompatible concepts to me. It's amazing how somebody is okay with Big Daddy Apple controlling what they do or do not do with the device they bought.

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