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Comment by yholio | Hacker News Reader

> I’m developing an app of my own creation to install on a device in my own possession, and now I have to prostrate myself before some review committee to use a staple of TCP/IP?

That's funny, he believes he owns an Apple device. Sorry, no. Apple locks down the device with strong crypto and rents you limited permissions, they sell a computing service, not a device. Apple are the only ones who get to say what code ultimately runs on their hardware.

The confusion is common due to the specific way the lease agreement is structured: you pay a lump sum for the device custody and future rent, you lose that sum if you damage the device, and you are responsible for recycling the outdated hardware instead of returning it to the owner.

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Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary software on the computers in my Civic either. But obviously I own it.

The state of federal law is that you own your iPhone and can run whatever software you want on it. Jailbreaking is legal, largely because you own your iPhone. The law just doesn’t force Apple to make it easy for you.

On a practical note, I’m interested in thoughts on why Apple might try to lock down multicast, specifically, but I have to scroll through dozens of comments arguing about a software system (iOS + App Store) that is now over 13 years old. Is there anyone on HN today who does not understand how iPhone software works? Why do we have to rehash a decade-old conversation on every single iPhone/iOS Apple story?

EDIT - Since I’m still in the edit window, I might as well link to a comment that seems actually useful and relevant to this blog post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28287064

There are other interesting and useful comments if you scroll down…

> Why do we have to rehash a decade-old conversation on every single iPhone/iOS Apple story?

Because this is the possibility of people to cash in on their "I told you so". Also, it is not too late to either change direction or jump ship; if we take this without complaining, the situation will only get worse.

> Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary software on the computers in my Civic either. But obviously I own it.

Cars and their infotaiment systems aren't marketed as general-purpose computing devices in the first place. iOS devices very much are.

Plus there's far more mods available for honda than there ever will be for Apple. Modding them, tuning the ECUs, aftermarket hardware and software, you bet baby. The car hacker community is very alive

Apple has been crystal clear in their marketing and documentation about how app development and distribution works on iOS since the day it was announced in 2008.

The specific question here is why Apple is putting new restrictions on multicast. Unfortunately all the informative comments are far below this rehash sub thread.

But are regular users aware of any of that? Do they know how app publishing works at all? Do they know about the absolute disgrace that is the app review process and the "guidelines" it follows? Do they know they can't sideload apps? Do they know every single binary that an iOS device runs has to be signed by Apple?

I bet they don't. And Apple would've lost some part of their user base if they were honest about this with their users, not just developers.

Though around me in particular, many people became acutely aware of that in 2016 when Pokemon Go became huge and those with iPhones found out they can't just download the game from somewhere else and install it to bypass the geographical restrictions in the app store. Some made separate Apple IDs for a country where it was available. Many were envious to those who use Android, because you'd just download an apk and be done with it.

Oh no, you think that if only the users knew about X then they would care, when really they don’t care so they have no reason to know about X. Not to get too off topic but Epic thought they’d have popular support for their new App Store but the entire world just shrugged and saw it as a greedy play for more money.

Anyways I digress, though you really think that Apple not wanting you to install an unsanctioned iPhone app is going to cause outrage? Sideloading has been a thing for a long long time

The modern era provides individual humans with greater access to information and ability to publish information than has ever existed before.

If “regular users” aren’t taking the same stance as you, maybe it’s not because they aren’t aware, maybe it’s because they have different use cases and priorities.

Every app they download is distributed through the app store. If it doesn't fit the app store rules, it simply never materializes, and so no one ever sees it. You only become aware of these limitations once you want to make an app, modify someone else's app, or, like in my example, want to use an app that isn't officially released in your country.

Apple is very good at disguising these limitations such that you don't notice them unless you start actively thinking about iOS development one way or another. In other words, you only become aware of the walls around the walled garden if you try to escape it.

The day the iPhone was announced they stated that the app model would be http based apps that could be installed from anywhere.

Honda could decide that every new sold car in future will phone home at the press of the ignition and check if the driver should be allowed to start the car. The software techniques to turn every car sold into a leasing service is not difficult to implement.

If there is such software is inside your civic then no, you don't own it. Honda does. The word "ownership" is in part defined by the ability to exert control. If Honda controls who drives the car, where, how and when, the owner is indisputable Honda.

This is why right to repair laws are important. If you buy the hardware, you should implicitly have the right to modify the software in-so-far as it is physically possible given the hardware package purchased.

It's entirely within the rights of a company to lock down their hardware if that's how they sell it to you, but it should be equally within the rights of the hardware owner to bypass those "protections". If Honda decides to lock ignition behind an arbitrary clearance check (pulling a John Deere), they shouldn't be able to retaliate if that lock gets bypassed -- as long as that distinction exists, we will always be proper owners of the things that we buy.

> Honda could decide that every new sold car in future will phone home at the press of the ignition and check if the driver should be allowed to start the car.

They may be mandated to do so:

> U.S. Senate bill seeks to require anti-drunk driving vehicle tech

* https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-bill-seeks-requir...

See also BMW and microtransactions:

* https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/2/21311332/bmw-in-car-purcha...

> The word "ownership" is in part defined by the ability to exert control.

If we were to upgrade the saying "possession is 99% of ownership" to the digital ream, it would be something like "control is 99% of ownership." The distinction between possession and control is only relevant for smart devices.

This is already the world we’re in with digital car keys that have been a thing since 2020. I still own my BMW which supports them.

Yes and they should consider doing that. After all, Trump supporters may drive their Civic to the Capitol. Our democracy dies in darkness!!!

> Why do we have to rehash a decade-old conversation on every single iPhone/iOS Apple story?

Because people are mad - still, and baffled - still, that Apple is successful and prosperous despite not catering to the niche needs of your average HN commenter.

There's also an easy solution: don't buy an iOS device.

You would think so, but the repeated comments you see in every Apple story makes it seem that folks cannot get over the very existence and success of Apple's device and app store philosophy enough to let any other discussion or criticism emerge.

Slightly OT, but thinking about your comment I wonder if there’s any correlation between people who don’t care about general purpose computing and people who drive commuter cars. I would think probably so - in both cases, many just want a box that gets them from point A to point B with no interest or concern about what’s going on inside the box.

> Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary software on the computers in my Civic either. But obviously I own it.

I can install any aftermarket parts I want to install in my Civic, because I own it.

But you might also make your car illegal to operate on public roads, depending on where you live.

Honda isn't part of that decision, and the laws apply equally to vehicles of all makes. As long as you don't modify emissions, you actually get quite a bit of leeway.

But you might also make a novel improvement that benefits all of your fellow users. Think about how many iPhone features were dreamed up not by Apple but by developers or even “hackers” who figured out a clever approach to a common problem.

I use the “flashlight” on my iPhone all the time but I remember when the only way to use it was to open the camera app, switch to video mode, and turn on the flash. And Shortcuts is one of the most useful app available for an iPhone and it was an idea patched together using APIs in a way Apple never intended. In fact, Shortcuts could be way better if Apple didn’t have so many seemingly random and arbitrary limitations.

> Why do we have to rehash a decade-old conversation

Because there's new people in the world every day and they need to hear this important conversation, which is new for them. If you are already aware, it does no harm to you to just ignore the conversation.

Well, Honda does actually offer an SDK for its cars, but it looks like their cert expired.... https://developer.hondainnovations.com/

> Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary software on the computers in my Civic either. But obviously I own it.

You are bound by 17 U.S.C. § 1201 to not attempt to alter the car in ways Honda does not approve.

> Jailbreaking is legal,

Not that simple. Since the DMCA/EUCD, it's complicated.

Multicast can certainly be used to fingerprint a network. I have done that for making apps automatically switch settings.

It is not clear to me why it would it would be different from the “Local Network” permission.

Because its the obvious outcome of the ancap principles that many on here are strongly in favour of. Company appeals to the largest market share by designing devices that work well for the majority of people. It just happens that HN readers are in the minority on this one.

>Honda does not give me an SDK and API to run arbitrary software on the computers in my Civic either.

If something goes haywire in my phone, it can't possibly turn into a 2 ton death machine, which is something that can happen with a car. Cars have stringent safety regulations that cell phones do not. So... bad example.

What galls me about this model is not that it exists, but that companies are allowed to use the words "buy" and "own" in their marketing and contracts around this. The distinction between buying and renting a house, or buying and leasing a car, is well understood. But when it comes to renting a console or a license to a piece of music, we use the same words as for ownership. Maybe we need a new word to describe the "lump sum up front but not for ownership" model.

Maybe someone can mount a legal challenge and establish case law. Document the whole buying process, copious advertising where Apple says you can purchase the device, then request the unlock code from Apple to run custom software.

If they refuse to provide it for purely commercial reasons despite having full technical ability to do so, you might have a case that you were misled into purchasing a subscription service. Ideally, you would find some advertised capability that is only enabled for apps sold though the App Store, a hidden subscription fee especially considering its onerous value.

Currently in progress: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/23/22399008/apple-lawsuit-ov...

As much as I want the court to decide that “buy” cannot mean anything less than “indefinite and irrevocable license” I’m expecting the judge to decide the case in Apple’s favour on the basis that consumer expectations have changed over the past 15 and that no “reasonable person” would expect a $15 impulse-buy of an intangible product to _last_. After all, you may have your VHS tapes from K-Mart you bought 30 years ago, but can you actually watch them? And you are “buying” a license to DRM’d content after-all and “buy” isn’t legally defined that way (Yes, I recognise it’s a terrible argument, just playing Devils’ advocate)

…or Apple will just change “Buy” to “Get” and it won’t make a difference to their bottom-line at all. I’ll bet that Apple’s profits - or even revenues - from purchases on iTMS for movies and TV shows are a rounding error compared to AppleTV+ subscriptions - and iPhone hardware sales, of course.

My guess is that Apple will say: “You’re free to root it and do what you want, but we don’t cover that with a warranty.”

In that sense, you do own an Apple product. But if you want to stay in their nice little walled garden, that ownership is more like buying a house that comes with a benevolent dictatorship HSA.

Apple will never publicly admit to the possibility of rooting their devices, especially not to allow bypassing DRM: they'd lose all their friends in Hollywood overnight.

Disney is an enormous company, owning pretty much everything in the media world, dwarfing other hollywood companies.

It has a Market Cap of $320b, way bigger than Sony, Time Warner, Viacom and MGM put together.

Apple on the other hand is worth about 7 times as much as Disney.

Yes, but a non-insignificant portion of their revenue comes from content from third-party media companies. They very much have an incentive to play ball with the likes of Disney & Sony, despite having the upper hand in terms of market cap.

Or they could buy Disney and a couple of others

> After all, you may have your VHS tapes from K-Mart you bought 30 years ago, but can you actually watch them

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or just a bad example. Yes, you can still watch VHS tapes, since they're physical media that can be decoded by a VHS playback device. You might have trouble finding the hardware, but if you have the hardware, it will still run – it's not going to require a software update.

> I can't tell if this is sarcasm or just a bad example

A bad example given HN's audience - but I imagine of most normal-people, the majority of those with a VCR will have left it in the attic or basement and never bothered to connect it to their modern LCD TV. If it was a home-video camcorder vid then it's likely already converted to DVD if it's worth preserving.

Well, that's the difference, isn't it? People were able to convert their VHS to DVD. Doing that for DRM would be impractical and/or illegal.

> The distinction between buying and renting a house, or buying and leasing a car

In the UK you can buy a freehold house for £250k and that's it. Or you can rent one for £800 a month, although that confers certain rights. But between those two, you can buy a leasehold house, which has obligations to pay a ground rent. You can buy a freehold house where you are obligated to pay a management company to maintain common areas.

"Buy" and "Rent" are certainly not clear cut.

With a car, I can rent a car from Hertz, or I can buy one for cash, or I can lease one, or I can buy one with a loan payment secured against the car, again there's no clear line between "buy" and "rent"

I think there is because “rent” and “lease” implies your intent is to stay there short-term. “Buy” says you literally are buying the home whether it’s with your money or someone else’s via some mortgage terms.

With an Apple device it certainly is muddy waters because you purchase hardware while simultaneously in some weird lease agreement for the software.

I guess it’s like buying a house in a gated community with very strict home owners association. You can purchase the house but if you want to put a new door on it you gotta go through the motions to ultimately get denied the color you want, etc.

And if Apple was the association they’d have a neighborhood watch ensuring 8PM curfews.

> . “Buy” says you literally are buying the home

As they said, with leasehold or some things with freehold it's not quite so simple.

I used to have a leasehold house, which I "bought" but also sort of rented, or at least rented-ish the land while owning-ish what was within the bricks.

I have a freehold house now, but there are restrictive covenants which technically govern what I am allowed to do to my own property (these are not council/etc permissions but private ones).

Indeed, until recently I lived in a freehold house which had a covenant saying my hedge could be no higher than 4' high, couldn't change the colour of my front door, couldn't park a van on my drive, that I had to pay a specified private company money each year to do various things, with no say over that company.

The term "buy", at least in the UK when it comes to housing, is a sliding scale.

It’s not much different in the US. Leasehold arrangements are less common, but still possible, particularly when dealing with “mobile” homes (that generally aren’t mobile at all once placed).

I nominate Sweden to be the weirdest country when it comes to housing ownership.

When buying a flat or a non-detached house, you usually fall into an ownership law called "bostadsrätt". In essence, you don't buy a house. You buy stocks in a housing association, which grant you the right to use the chosen flat/house. The housing association is pretty much run like a company, with a yearly board meeting, a CEO, a CFO, etc. Your ownership is proportional to the surface area you bought.

> I guess it’s like buying a house in a gated community with very strict home owners association

So it is buying then.

When the lease runs out it reverts to the freeholder, though often after a considerable period of time. So not owned forever.

In a home owner's association, the home owners are part of the association. You have to play by the rules, but you are also part of the body that makes the rules.

In this case, the party setting the rules is more like the rich person who originally built and "sold" the houses (but still enforces curfew, and changes the rules whenever they feel like it).

But those various ownership models aren’t buried behind 100s pages of EULAs. Or, when they are, you hire a lawyer to represent your interests in the purchase.

Never dealt with code enforcement or a home owners association eh?

You seem to have missed the last half of my comment.

And completely missed the main point - buying/owning a house can be complicated, so we frequently involve lawyers to represent our interests.

Buying a phone shouldn't be so complicated. But, not only are EULAs overly long, they're often written in legalese which is beyond the comprehension of the average person.

Leasehold houses are a crazy idea and the government should certainly have stepped in early as developers began selling the freehold (and thus the entitlement to receive ground rent indefinitely) as an investment. Historically most of these leases were "peppercorn rent" which means they had some notional requirement of rent to be paid, but you were not in fact expected to pay rent. But legally any consideration works, so if you can charge a peppercorn (as a legal fiction to make this a contractual arrangement between freeholder and leaseholder since cutting up the freehold was for whatever reason impossible) you can charge £250 per year. Or £1000 per year...

Because the government didn't step in early and say "Oh, that's just an obsolete feature, you can't do that with it, we'll remove it" and pass legislation in say 2005 to set the maximum ground rent at a notional £1, the "investors" got bolder. They added escalator clauses, after all £1000 per year is a nice earner today, but it won't be much in a hundred years, so let's say it doubles every 25 years to account for likely inflation plus some profit.

Actually wait, the idiots are still buying them, let's say it doubles every 10 years.

And next thing you know, some of the people who "own" a house are paying almost as much rent as people who don't "own" a house, oops.

Funny that the property owning, rich investor classes in the Tory party don't seem to be in a big hurry to actually fix this, although they do say it's a "Priority" (like everything else) when confronted. I wonder how much money Rishi earns every day from this "mistake" that he never got around to doing anything about as chancellor for example...

Never heard of peppercorn rent until reading your comment- as a nice coincidence I was reading a Reddit thread on weird NYC trivia that included a link out to this article of the Queen visiting NYC in 1970s to collect 279 years worth of back rent for Trinity Church (which was literally 279 peppercorns)

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/10/archives/queen-warmly-rec...

The dividing line between "buy" and "rent" can be as clear-cut as you like, or as much a grey-zone continuum as you like as long as it is spelled out clearly up front to the buyer.

The problem is not that there are gradations of "ownership". The problem is that Apple (and many others) conflate the terms and deliberately obfuscate exactly what your rights are when you "buy".

The main difference between each of those scenarios and the one I describe is that we have words to describe them. From your post: freehold, leasehold, buy, rent, loan (and I'll add: mortgage). You don't need to read the fine print to know that these are meaningfully different.

I'm on board with the idea that there's a lot of arrangements in between full ownership and pure rental, as long as we have terms to describe the meaningful differences.

There's a big difference between freehold on a new build estate and freehold on an older house, the former has various conditions attached.

But in all these cases we use the word "buy" to buy the car or house, just like we use the word "buy" to take in posession of a slab of electronics

Freehold for £250k made me laugh! But mostly cry. Salty, salty millenial tears.

Literally bought my house for £250k, completed 11 days ago. Sold previous house for £240k a few minutes earlier.

Houses are similar really - you need permission to make changes, and are restricted in what you're allowed to do with them. Only difference is it's not a private company with that control.

It's not just "a" private company, it's the private company which sold you the device.

However houses don’t become essentially unsupported and obsolete at the whim of some other entity.

A locked down phone without software updates will soon become not practical to keep using.

I’m looking at spending 100k to bring a property up to fire code, and possibly rebuilding the floor. Until that happens, I won’t be able to move in. So, yes, buildings do become obsolete at the whim of some other entity.

Usually (at least where I live) properties that were at code in maintain that status through "grandfathering" even if the code changes.

We have an old elevator in my building. It gets inspected year to year. If replaced it has to be up to code. A new up to code elevator, won't physically fit in the space the old one is). We're also in a "historic" district which is another entity of denial.

You are right that upgrades can become a nightmare of codes/regulations. At least in the US these entities are controlled by a government we in theory elect so its at least partially our fault. Also at least in the US, when the government "takes" or changes a rule that destroys value, there is always the threat of a lawsuit for the value destroyed.

Good point, but at least with a government, if you pay taxes there's usually at least some recourse and a potential to get things changed. With a private company, you're almost always told to go pound sand.

Following the Grenfell disaster in London, flats up and down the country have been valued at £0 and are thus unmortgagable due to their use of cladding material that no longer is deemed safe.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/nov/02/after-grenfell...

In reality they are misusing the words "buy" and "own" to make sales... If they would talk about "rents" in marketing, sales would drop... So they are "bending the truth" to make sales...

This is based on a nonsensical idea of what ‘ownership’ allows you to do.

When you buy a phone, you definitely own all the atoms in it. You can take it apart and use the bits to make jewelry. You can take all the phones you have and assemble them into a piece of wall art. Apple has no say in what you do with the object.

But your belief that physical ownership of the object should mean you can make it do anything you want is… bounded by your actual capability to do so.

You can probably extract some of the parts of your phone and reuse them - maybe with care and patience you could figure out how to use the screen, or the battery, or the camera as part of another device. Again, not something Apple can stop you doing.

But expecting to be able to use a device to do something you want to merely because you know the potential to do so is inside is an unrealistic expectation. A cotton t-shirt might contain enough thread to be able to be woven into a pair of shorts, but you can’t complain to the manufacturer that the way they made the t-shirt makes it hard for you to turn it into shorts. They sold it to you in a useful, valuable configuration. They’re not obligated to make it easy for you to reconfigure it to your will.

That t-shirt analogy feels a little stretchy to me. The configuration option used to exist. All iPhone developers were able to use it. Now Apple is revoking that permission. That’s hardly “reconfiguring to our will.”

Messing with the software, to this day, is also allowed as you own the device. The only thing stopping OP is their own technical skills/the publicly available tools that allow modification of the code in the right way (as in: jailbreaking is still legal, but Apple has the right to put barriers in the way of it for security reasons).

Right - if you ripped the ROM chip off and replaced it with your own ROM containing your own OS and drivers for all the hardware you could make the hardware do anything it’s physically capable of accomplishing. And Apple would have no legal recourse.

The fact that that is an extremely complicated thing to do is not apple’s problem.

I agree with you - As long as the barrier is genuinely complexity.

My issue is that Apple (and many other manufacturers, this isn't really Apple specific) add complexity solely to act as digital locks on what is otherwise a fairly obvious and achievable task.

Take your ROM example - Why should I even need to rip it off and replace it? I know damn well how to flash ROM. I have the software tools available. I have the image file with all the drivers I need/want. The only thing stopping me is digital locks in the device.

Are the locks themselves evil? No, clearly not - I lock my house when I leave, and I'll probably leave my phone locked most times too.

Are the locks evil if I don't own a key? Pretty clearly yes.

Can I rip the whole device apart, interface directly with the ROM, and flash it? Probably - assuming I buy some much more expensive hardware. But that sorta defeats the point of having the device, yes?

Just like it's not reasonable to sell me a car without a key.

---

- Congratulations - you own this brand new car you just bought!

- Great! Thank you so much, can I have the keys to drive it now?

- No, no... of course not. When you want to drive it, you phone us up, and we come unlock and start it for you

- Wait... what? That's bullshit - I just bought this car!

- Well, you're welcome to break a window and hotwire it to drive it. But do be aware we'll report this as theft to the police, and depending on what you tinker with we might also throw the DMCA at you

Your car analogy sounds a lot like Tesla with phone-as-key, and last I checked Tesla sold 500k of those last year and are on track to sell 800k this year. People have been locked out of their Teslas when their phone is dead and they didn't bring a physical key with them.

Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they protect against the threat model of physical access, whether that be an attack thanks to leaving the phone unlocked or giving your passcode to your friend to use for a while. This is all in disregardless of whether or not the customer actually has this as part of their personal threat model.

>are on track to sell 800k this year

Zero of which will be bought by me.

>Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they protect against the threat model of physical access

Apple can add as many arbitrary digital locks as they want. The problem is that they keep the key instead of giving it to the user.

My point is that, Short of an actual physical key, by giving the user the key, they give everyone the key to do this to any iPhone in their possession, regardless of ownership. Any regulatory change shouldn't nullify Find My iPhone protections to the point that theft of iPhones becomes lucrative again.

> they didn't bring a physical key with them.

Which they still own and have.

Adding an optional "You phone us and we can unlock your car with a copy of your key" is fine by me. As long as I still have the fucking key.

----

For the second part - The security boogey man is not a compelling argument to give up ownership rights and enter digital serfdom where you only own a device if you use it in the way the manufacturer intends and approves of.

I'm not asking them to stop selling devices with locks. Hell, I'm even fine with them keeping a copy of the keys (which they have right now). I'm just saying: As the owner of a computer, I deserve to have a copy of the fucking keys that make it work.

It's not a car without a key, though, is it? It's more like a car with a factory-installed speed limiter, which the manufacturer is not obliged to help you remove or disable... and which, in fact, the manufacturer has good reasons for needing to make it hard to disable.

- I just want to be able to drive MY car as fast as I like!

- okay, but the trouble is the way this car works, if we give you the ability to disable the speed limiter, there's literally no way we can do that that doesn't also open up the possibility that when you turn on the radio, the radio station might broadcast an ad that causes an uncontrolled acceleration.

- that's a stupid way to design a car

- well yes, but this is an analogy car, not a real car. The real system in question is a turing-complete networked device designed to run arbitrary third-party software, so... the analogy is going to be slightly flawed.

And no, Apple isn't going to report a theft if you physically damage your phone, nor are they going to have a DMCA complaint if you hack your own phone in ways that let you change the way the software on it behaves (you might run into DMCS issues if you try to distribute tools to help other people do that, which is... definitely dubious, but that's what the law says; it doesn't have a great deal to do with this case of the Apple restrictions on which software the OS trusts to use its multicast API, though.)

---

This - this piece here is the fallacy in your argument. There absolutely are ways to do this. Matter of fact, Apple themselves have a nice little set of digital keys that lets them turn all these locks off as they please.

So the argument is not "We have no way to do this safely" it's "We don't believe you (the owner of the damn device) can be trusted to do this safely."

Which brings me right back to - you don't own the damn thing.

This would make sense if I had the tools to unweave and reweave a t-shirt but the manufacturer has added additional wire in a cross pattern to specifically prevent this.

Apple actively design their products to not allow you to reconfigure them even if you have the tooling. The shirt manufacturers do not prevent me from taking a old shirt and making oil rags from the fabric.

Well in this case, Apple make a ‘tool’ that lets you send multicast packets (it’s actually built in to the device, but it’s behind a lock) - and they will even give you the key to unlock that tool and instructions for how to use it if you apply through a form on their website!

That doesn’t seem quite so evil, does it?

If I own the device, why does it have a lock to which I do not have a fucking key?

"I sold him the car, officer! I just refuse to give him the keys to actually start it."

Because the main usecase of the device is running software written by third parties and if that tool was left unlocked occasionally that third party software would hack into your home router.

I don't mind the lock. I mind that it's a lock to which I don't have the fucking key.

I understand the risks of allowing local network access, I'd like to unlock the lock.

Why does apple still have control to say no?

I mean, you sort of do, don't you? You don't need to go through this to get the entitlement for a dev build that you put on your phone.

According to apple’s explanation page [1] (near the middle) you can only run on the simulator without the entitlement.

> Note: You can test your app using the iOS and iPadOS simulators without an active entitlement, but using multicast and broadcast networking on physical hardware requires the entitlement.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=0oi77447

You actually can unlock it - just get an app written by a trusted developer that uses the multicast functionality, and you can use your phone to transmit the multicast traffic that app generates.

You’re free to access that functionality of your device, using software that uses it responsibly.

> using software that uses it responsibly.

So using it solely in ways Apple approves of - Since they're the arbiter of "responsible" here.

So how do I own this device again?

Who the fuck is Apple to tell me what responsible use looks like on a device that I own, on a network that I own, in my own damn home.

If you bought a car without a key it would still be yours.

If not for your replies elsewhere in this thread I'd assume you were being sarcastic.

Yes, a device manufacturer putting locks on my device that I can only open by "apply[ing] through a form on their website" does seem pretty evil to me.

I would take the analogy even further. While you may physically have the capability to do as you please with the house you own, you do not have the legal permission to do so. The exterior is heavily regulated by city landscaping regulations. The interior structure is heavily regulated by building codes. Mess with wiring and you can say goodbye to your electricity grid connection. Mess with pipes and no insurance will cover you.

Similarly, I own a car. Can I take off the seat belts? Physically, yes. But legally, a vehicle without a seat belts is no longer a car and I lose the right to enjoy driving it on public roads.

Ownership was never about physical possession. It's about gaining some rights.

Back to phones, the challenge is to demarcate what rights does an owner get when they buy a phone. To side with Epic Games, the discussion is even more complicated by Apple's (purposeful) confusion of owning a phone with having access to an ecosystem of apps for that phone. I can do whatever I am capable of with my iPhone, but I may lose access to the ecosystem of apps.

This doesn't hold at all.

You not being allowed to drive a car without seat belts has nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with the road.

You own the car. You share the road.

You can drive that car anywhere you want with permission from the owners, you just can't share the road we all paid for together unless you put on a god-damned seat belt so that John the EMT doesn't have to see the 4th smeared human body on the shared road this week when you crash it.

It's not awful for this specific entitlement, as we could say "you own the phone, you share the network".

(You might own some networks. But you also might own some roads. We'd stretch the analogy to your home WiFi being akin to your driveway, I guess.)

Apple doesn't own the network.

Honda doesn't own the roads.

> But your belief that physical ownership of the object should mean you can make it do anything you want is… bounded by your actual capability to do so.

No object should ever actively, uncompromisingly preclude me from using it to do something of which it is capable. Objects can suggest I take a certain course of action, but ultimately they must follow my instructions without trying to impede me. Any other way and I don’t truly own the object.

The object of your iPhone will absolutely not impede you in any way from using its antenna to transmit a multicast IP packet on a WiFi network.

It is up to you to figure out how to get the electrons in the antenna to wiggle in the appropriate manner to make that happen, but there are absolutely no constraints preventing you, as the owner of said iPhone, from doing so.

> The object of your iPhone will absolutely not impede you in any way from using its antenna to transmit a multicast IP packet on a WiFi network.

Yes it will. The premise of your claim is wrong. It impedes me from doing lots of things, like running apps that aren’t approved by Apple.

You want Apple to give you some software that lets you do that without restriction. They don’t want to. So if you want to do so without restriction you’ll have to make your own software - as in, literally replace the entire software stack, rom/os/drivers with software that does what you want.

Good luck with that, but don’t blame the device - the object you bought and own - for your failure to be able to.

This is incorrect! If you rearrange certain atoms in ways not approved, you are in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201. If this improves your financial standing, you have committed a crime under 17 U.S. Code § 1204 and are subject to not more than $500000 or 5 years in prison.

Under the DMCA, if you rearrange the atoms or attempt to describe how to rearrange the atoms in a way not approved by the phone manufacturer, you are a criminal.

Copyright, and in particular the DMCA, has superseded your ownership of the atoms. You must do with them as the true owner of the atoms (Apple for example) permits.

If you rearrange the atoms into your neighbor’s head you violate a bunch of laws as well. Owning an object certainly doesn’t immunize you from your obligations to use it in ways that comply with the law.

There is always a point at which you don't control the stack, that's been the case for decades now. Just look at the CPU and how you can't change the code that interprets microcode (I think I'm using that term right) or, even more insidious, the Intel ME. Yes, Apple has moved their control up the stack but some people pretend the world was an open source utopia before Apple created the iPhone. As someone who has to provide tech support to my family/friends I can tell you I couldn't be happier that they can't screw up their phones like they do their computers.

This is also a bad thing.

Would you object to the use of the word "buy" for the purchase of a house if there is a homeowner's association around that can restrict how you paint your house, how often you mow your lawn, or whether you can hang laundry outside?

If my Apple purchase gives me an equal level of control in Apple's policies as every other holder of an Apple device, such that it only requires a majority of votes cast to change any of those policies, then no.

If my purchase of a home meant I had no participatory rights in the HoA, and they can still change the rules at any time on me, and didn't have to disclose in plain language the existing ones upfront, then yes.

If that's all that bothers you, they can simply never use those words. "The NEW XphoneY is just $699!" -- doesn't say "buy".

It's the same model that has been the mainstream for games consoles and mobile games platforms for decades. iOS devices are pretty well locked down pro/consumer products that come with a managed application distribution system. If that's not what you want, there are other options.

It seems to me that if Apple had no more than 10% of the mobile market anywhere this just wouldn't be an issue. If that's what some people wanted, fine, they could get it. The reason it's a problem is, as it turns out, this model works really well for a lot of people and is fantastically popular.

The problem is the false marketing around this.

There are no options - there are no longer any mobile devices you actually own and control. The right to private property has been cancelled by, ironically, free market extremists.

At least with Android, you have the option to install external APKs, as cumbersome as that is.

Also you can install AOSP which is open source android operating system on some devices. And some other open source Android flavours. Yes, may be with few driver blobs, but that's not a restriction, you still can do anything with your device on every level.

Well and at least some suppliers offer you the option to install your own OS on it. At which point any restrictions the phone has are at least technically self-imposed.

7 steps isn't cumbersome.

-- 1) Open Chrome.

-- 2) Find and Download APK. https://i.imgur.com/ZFZb1uE.png

-- 3) Accept warning and Open APK.

-- 4) Go to settings. (This only has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/R8FzTzP.png

-- 5) Toggle Install Unknown Apps for Chrome. (This only has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/K0ADO2q.png

-- 6) Click back (This only has to be done once)

-- 7) Click install. https://i.imgur.com/xVSndex.png

-- Done. https://i.imgur.com/fyasTK9.png

Once you do this for the first time, the process reduces down to 4 steps each time after: Open Chrome, Download APK, Open APK, Click Install. Done.

-- 8) Wait for a call from Aunt Susan after she installs some malware that told her it would boost her cell signal. :)

* https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/infected-apkpure/39273/

Is not like the Google and Apple stored are not filled with garbage, it was recently revealed that Apple refused to notify the users that got infected from their "safe" store.

About Aunt Susan , you could have the device locked by default and have a more complex process to root the device, like some code/password that is in the box of the device, in that envelope Apple PR team could inform Aunt Susan that she should not do this unless she is tech competent or a communist.

God forbid we hold users responsible for exercising due diligence. No, we must assume everyone is too incompetent to distinguish between shady and legit software.

> No, we must assume everyone is too incompetent to distinguish between shady and legit software.

As someone who has worked retail in the past, and who currently works in IT: starting with this assumption generally minimizes headaches down the road.

There are only so many hours in the day: people learn what they need to get their job done, and tend to move on. Some people are quite dim, but others don't have the time/energy/motivation/need to learn the details.

I think us enthusiasts tend to lose sight of the fact that most people don’t care to learn about how their computers work, just like how most people don’t care to learn about how their cars work.

Every discussion about the average user needs to start with https://xkcd.com/2501 to put yourself in the right mindset.

And pretty much no one understands to any significant depth all or probably even most of the technology they interact with every day.

Proffeshionals can't distinguish vulnerabilities in their own fucking software, so we have no right to blame the users.

First rule of IT club is you DONT TELL AUNT SUSUAN ABOUT THIS METHOD!

It used to be grandma. Because of grandma (and Aunt Susan), future generations of children will never have the freedom we had growing up.

Seems like you could copy paste this into every single "complaining about Apple" thread on Hacker News for the last few years. That people think that Android doesn't exist or is exactly the same as Apple, and you can't sideload apps or root at least some devices has become a widely held belief on Hacker News that has to get corrected in every single thread. I count several different comments that are mistaken in this way in this post alone.

That's because we don't like telling the people who need to be told that you can sideload apps, because they're the very same people who will later complain that they downloaded a "Free APK" of Sparkle Monkey Defenders eX from some Chinese app store and now their phone is vomiting up full-screen interstitial ads every few minutes. ...and we're supposed to fix it for them.

That's a rather extremist viewpoint but it does have a nice rhyme to it.

PinePhone?

I really don't consider myself a free market extremist. I fully support regulation for health and safety reasons, mandatory accurate and informative product descriptions, minimum quality requirements in many areas, consumer protection laws such as minimum warranty periods. There are many areas where it makes sense for us collectively, through our governments, to make sure we as consumers are not getting ripped off and get a fair deal. It's just balancing out the power disparity between vendors and individual customers.

So I am open to arguments for regulating mobile phone platforms, if that proves to be necessary. I just don't think it is, none of the arguments Ive seen so far are compelling. They mostly seem to be sour grapes. "I want to buy X product with P, Q, R features and nobody is making one, we should force them to by law". No, that's not how that works.

> They mostly seem to be sour grapes. "I want to buy X product with P, Q, R features and nobody is making one, we should force them to by law". No, that's not how that works.

I think it’s closer to: I bought a 10% black box (90% open) widget in the 1990s, and now in 2020 that same widget (with a few more functions) is 80% closed. And: why can I no longer use a generic computer for what I want to use it for? We’ve forgotten that an open distributed learning web is possible, and how instead computer literacy (programming) is very low because most of us can no longer follow our curiosity and look inside technological systems; only ‘experts' are allowed to do that (someone wrote about that recently, that whenever he talked to older/earlier computer hobbyists, how most of them mention that they are pretty disappointed by today‘s black box world/web).

And no they’re not ‘sour grapes‘, they’re just sensing the painful ways in which the commons has been plundered, and feeling frustrated by the way people such as yourself pretend that there are still many benefits to be found in locked down/black box platforms and devices, which there aren't.

The completely ludicrous part is how normalized all this is today. How much our tools are now over-engineered, non-modular and non-repairable; how much black box shit we produce. Literal shit. Single use shit. Biological systems have no waste, yet our current production systems produce the most toxic, anti-life sludge the world has seen (see Baotou -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_UdqZdFr-w). Today we produce coffee machines that have iPads sitting in a dock with virtual buttons to choose options. An iPad. What the fuck. What is that? Infinitely less complex technology was used to send people to the moon. What a complete and total waste of valuable resources and laborers' time!

I'm talking about how we could have so many more open standards and decide to produce only high quality stuff. But no, our culture teaches us to discredit those who came before and to commoditize tiny incremental updates, slapping our own names on them (‘branding’) to please our neglected and alienated souls. I’m so tired of this false story of the need for competition. Humans are copying machine. It’s ok to copy! It’s how we learn and grow.

Anyways, to get closer to a 'universal basic inheritance' - a commons that respects actual scarcity, and thus also the abundance of digital resources (scientific knowledge and technological blueprints), we need a new system for accounting. I believe http://valueflo.ws can offer us a very possible way forward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymAHXGSM14: they are radically distributed supply chain systems using the Resource-Event-Agent ontology, built on fully distributed tech, e.g. holochain and activitypub.

To see an exciting future that has been buried yet not forgotten (it's a new Cybersyn documentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJLA2_Ho7X0

This is so out of touch with the actual real world it's a bit concerning. There are plenty of open computing platforms kids can learn from these days, and schools are full of them. PCs are still pretty open, Linux is easy to install, Raspberry Pi and similar devices are cheap and accessible. My kids learned about all that stuff at school here in the UK. In most developed countries almost every kid in school gets to learn how to write at least simple programs. I taught my kids Python on their iPads.

>...pretend there are still many benefits to be found in locked down platforms and devices, which there isn't.

Now you're in lala land. People derive enormous benefits from ubiquitous access to easy to use computer technology all the time. They're just not the benefits you personally seem to value or understand.

Yeah, I'm not sure where this incredibly open world of 1999 (to say nothing of 1989 or 1979) existed.

Telephony has always been very closed--fringe phone phreaking notwithstanding. Heck, some of us have been around long enough to remember when you had to rent a phone from a regulated monopoly.

And in the 90s, Windows was mostly your choice in a computer. You could build your own PCs but you mostly had to run Windows. (Linux was still quite early days at that time.)

Access to computing under the hood is much more democratized than it used to be even if the vast majority of people choose to use effectively appliances for certain tasks.

And, if I recall correctly, in the '90s, you had to pay for developer tools for Windows. (Or Mac, but Windows was, indeed, mostly your choice in a computer.) Today, every mainstream computer shipped—Mac and Windows—has a dizzying variety of free-as-in-beer development environments available for them, many also free-as-in-freedom.

Yes. Developer tools (and consumer software generally) were quite expensive. A typical compiler from Microsoft was hundreds of dollars. (Borland drove pricing down somewhat.) I forget what an MSDN subscription cost but it wasn't cheap.

"There are plenty of open computing platforms"

And roughly zero of them can make a phonecall, or a contactless payment, or to find directions on the go because they are not portable and internet connected.

All of the areas you mentioned are heavily regulated. And do GPS require internet connection ?

> I bought a 10% black box (90% open) widget in the 1990s, and now in 2020 that same widget (with a few more functions) is 80% closed.

My mobile phone in the 90s was certainly not 90% open, it was far less open than my current iphone. I guess it was easier to change the battery, if that's what you mean? Swapping a proprietary battery doesn't count as open in my book.

My desktop computer in the 90s on the other hand was far more closed than my current one.

And, if by mobile, you mean network connected, even if you built your own hardware from components, you still don't own and control the networks (cellular or otherwise) over which that device will communicate.

ADDED: And if it's not obvious from the context, by "network" I mean a network that can communicate with the broader world, not just a LAN.

I'm not following you. What's to stop you setting up your own local network, entirely under your control?

For a LAN: Nothing, but you won't be able to communicate to anyone outside of it. You also won't be able to access it away from wherever you set it up.

For the primary networks at issue here, cellular networks: The FCC, and regulations restricting what devices can access which EM frequencies legally.

So, you don't own other people's networks? Right.

Nit: it is possible to build a private LTE/5G network if you use appropriate spectrum reserved for that purpose:

* https://www.sierrawireless.com/iot-blog/what-are-private-lte...

Not sure about connectivity to the larger / global SS7 network.

Also, you probably don’t have the right to make your own mobile modem unless you’re fine with it needing its own car battery and alternator thanks to Qualcomm’s patents.

Standards patents must be made available to license. Apple tried really hard to invest in a competing cellular modem provider (Intel) and gave up. Turns out, they’re really hard to build, and that’s why you can’t build one. Not patents.

Apple did purchase Intel's modem division[0], so while they temporarily have started purchasing from Qualcomm, maybe they're throwing more R&D at it than Intel did to actually compete with Qualcomm within the next few years.

0: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-to-acquire-the-...

> The right to private property has been cancelled by, ironically, free market extremists.

This line of argument is frankly incoherent. That many, not all, available mobile devices remain firmly under the control of their makers after purchase is not because some free marketeer (or cabal thereof) foisted these devices onto unwilling recipients. This situation came about because the majority of mobile device users saw the deal on offer and decided they were better off taking it that walking. The real source of the status quo is the average consumer... no matter their ideology. That buyers weigh promises of "Just Works", the status of owning the cool new device that's in fashion, and some guardian supposedly lurking in the background keeping them safe over your own (seemingly apparent) priorities is a matter of each individual choice.

Private property rights haven't been cancelled at all or by anyone. There simply aren't enough people interested in owning devices that they fully control. Insofar as there are few alternatives to the status quo... blame the privacy activists and those clamoring for "full control" for not better convincing the masses that what they're giving up for iOS & Android is more than they're getting by buying these devices. As a free market extremist myself, I guarantee you: if people stop buying these devices because the deal is perceived as bad the situation will change.

Finally, if I try to infer what you might be for (rather than what you're against), which I do because it's the only reason to call out "free market extremists", is that you want a small group of "our betters" to decide what exactly a mobile device should be, over and above all those that find the current deal sufficiently satisfactory. You would have your priorities made the only choice over the interests of the majority of consumers. Ironically, perhaps, you'd eliminate the broader spectrum of choices by forcing what choices were allowed... wanted and valued or not. Naturally, I'm reading a lot into your short comment... but what solution do you really see that isn't a free market extremist position that doesn't come close to what I think you're saying?

Its so ironic to see 'freedom people' defend a system that would make Stalin green with envy.

"saw the deal on offer and decided they were better off taking it that walking"

The same reasoning applies to loan sharks, drug dealers and mafia. 'Unlimited' free market always degrades into oligopoly or Mafia rule.

"you want a small group of "our betters" to decide what exactly a mobile device should be"

You want that, and you have that- a small group of powerfull men decide to do with your device. Tomorrow your device uodates and startps reporting you to police for speeding, and there is fuck all you can do.

I am not asking for a communist mobile pgone comitee, I am asking for the word ownership to mean something. It's not a difficult concept.

This situation leaves me so conflicted on the whole antitrust, “just force iOS open” thing.

On one hand, the locked down iOS clearly hurts a lot of businesses and broader market competition.

On the other hand, Apple has been open and honest (and rather boastful) of the locked down nature of iOS since Day 1. Consumers have very clearly voted with their wallet time and time again that this system (and it’s tradeoffs) is the one they prefer.

To force iOS open is to undo the choices that consumers have made. But to leave iOS restricted is to harm broader business competitiveness.

You’re right that if Apple had marginal market share, this behaviour would not be problematic.

Broadly speaking, I’m not all that sympathetic to the plight of the big-name developers like Facebook and Match Group. They’ve collectively made users so cynical about privacy, security and the general trustworthiness of software that it’s prompted users to take refuge behind these hardened walled gardens. I just hate to see good independent developers have to be harmed as a consequence of that as well.

Just because you buy something for some of the features, it doesn't mean you want all the features it has.

Isn’t it rather reductionist to say that the closed nature of iOS is why people buy it?

I chose iphone because a string of bugs left a sour taste in my mouth with android, and inertia locked me in. I definitely don’t want this level of locking it down, and I doubt a majority of iphone buyers want this.

Security, privacy, reliability and “it just works” was always a major selling point of the iPhone. The various software restrictions were a major part of delivering that assurance that some third party software wouldn’t mess with your device. It might not have been a motivating factor for you, but it certainly was for a lot of consumers.

And regardless, Apple has never hidden the nature of iOS. These consumers have clearly decided that the tradeoffs of the walled garden were acceptable, despite there being plenty of more open alternatives on the market in the early days of the iPhone.

> Security, privacy, reliability and “it just works” was always a major selling point of the iPhone.

Security, privacy, reliability and “it just works” was always a major selling point of the Macbook too.

The dichotomy between secure and locked and open but unsecure is a complete strawman. It is possible to be both open and secure. People would still be able to only install applications from the App Store even if the iPhone was less locked.

I would say that iOS is clearly more secure, private and reliable than OS X is.

Apps on Mac OS X can absolutely screw up your machine. Adware in particular is a big problem for novice OS X users (speaking first hand here, having had to support these users). That’s an exceptionally rare occurrence on iOS.

I’m comfortable with the security model on macOS, but would be very concerned if that same model were applied to iPhoneOS, where users (myself included) carry significantly more private information.

On my phone, I want applications to have access to as little private information as possible, even if it’s detrimental to functionality. Call me a security nihilist, but security and privacy is by far my #1 overriding concern on mobile platforms, given the wealth of personally identifying information these devices gather.

More succinctly: the threat model on mobile devices is not the same as the threat model on personal computers. It’s inappropriate to apply the same security to both platforms.

I don't think so. 99.9% of people don't need or want to do anything beyond what iPhone/Android currently offers, I would put money on the fact that a majority of iphone buyers are completely happy with things as they are.

It’s interesting that, specifically with regards to the App Store and iOS API restrictions, the complaints more or less exclusively come from two groups:

1. Third party developers

2. A subset of power users

The broader end user appears to be quite satisfied with the status quo.

It’s a weird situation where anti-trust law (which ostensibly exists to protect the consumer) is likely in opposition to broader consumer sentiment.

It’s a very different situation than Microsoft’s antitrust in the 90s, where consumers strongly supported the antitrust actions.

> It’s a very different situation than Microsoft’s antitrust in the 90s, where consumers strongly supported the antitrust actions.

Customers mostly didn't care about Microsoft antitrust trial in the 90s either. It was mostly affecting third party developpers and companies selling computers. The situation is not particularly dissimilar except Microsoft had a clear monopoly while Apple and Google are a duopoly and Apple is seen as a lifestyle brand to defend by a rabid minority of its customers while Microsoft was strictly seen as a tech company then.

Most end users loved Microsoft because they put real computing power in the average user's hands at an affordable price.

It is also important to note that Internet Explorer was a VASTLY SUPERIOR PRODUCT to Netscape. So Microsoft competed, fair and square. The antitrust trial was just Netscape getting assmad that they were beaten at their own game.

> Isn’t it rather reductionist to say that the closed nature of iOS is why people buy it?

No, we've heard plenty of people here on HN specifically say that's why they prefer it.

I can't speak for others, but in my case it is indeed one of the reasons. I am using my iPhone and iPad solely as communication, productivity and entertainment tools. The consistency of experience, the relatively higher app quality and slightly improved ecosystem safety are valuable things to me. I can still create whatever application I want in XCode, as long as it doesn't push the boundaries of the allowed, and yes, those boundaries are a restriction, but one that I am fully aware and accepting of.

I am also fully aware that if I want a mobile hackable device I will have to find another option and I am fine with it.

And by any measure, this already put me in the minority of minorities. I doubt most users would want a more open iphone if they are made aware of the trade ofs. Why should a businessman want to know more technical stuff in order to use his phone? just so we geeks would be able to sideload stuff? Well, he don't want it, he actively don't want the device to give him this freedom, because them he would have to be aware of boundaries that he didn't have to before, more cognitive workload for him for no value added.

> The reason it's a problem is, as it turns out, this model works really well for a lot of people and is fantastically popular.

Turns out a lot of people don't want to deal with the responsibilities of completely owning a device (updates, anti-malware, app origin), and are willing to give up some control/ownership in exchange for convenience and being able to get on with life. (Certainly not everyone of course.)

Whether this view of convenience is short-sighted and will be regretted long-term remains to be seen.

There is absolutely no reason we can't have our cake and eat it too.

That would require solving hard security problems instead of punting on them by whitelisting.

Apple’s policies are guided in part by profit motive but also by security nihilism.

There’s no reason these security measures couldn’t be opt-out

If we regret it long term, people will start buying different products with the features they want.

They won't, if those products aren't available on the market. Which they won't be, because currently the "managed" approach yields more revenue.

"Voting with your wallet" doesn't work on most technology markets, where products and services are not commodities, and where the barriers to entry are insanely high. Yes - insanely high. Sure, you can get a $100 computer and a $10/month Internet connection and start writing software for millions, except it won't do you much good - software is the easy part. To compete with Facebook, you need to bootstrap a whole social network. To compete with Apple and Google on the phone market, you'll need to bootstrap your own hardware manufacturing, because all the smartphone vendors are into the same user-hostile crap these days.

Projects like PinePhone are probably as far as you can reasonably get on the "smartphone, except not user hostile" front. It's worth looking into why they don't succeed. It's not as simple as "people must not truly want it because they aren't paying the premium to get it".

It's irrelevant. We don't get to tell people what they are and are not willing to pay for.

Consumer protection law is the tool that allows that to happen.

Ironic that we're talking about using law to protect consumers from a company by not allowing them to use a walled garden to protect consumers.

The App Store model is about extracting rents. That the walled garden offers "protection" to consumers is incidental. The "privacy" and "security" stance taken by Apple is about protecting their revenues and burnishing their image in the eyes of the public. When their revenues are at risk (like their concessions with China) they take the financially expedient route.

> The App Store model is about extracting rents. That the walled garden offers "protection" to consumers is incidental.

Not according to many on HN who argue that it is precisely why they purchased an iOS device instead of an Android one.

I think we have to be really careful about trying to push our ideals on others via regulation.

> Not according to many on HN who argue that it is precisely why they purchased an iOS device instead of an Android one.

raises hand

It's not the only reason, but it is a reason. With government asleep at the wheel on regulating things like subscriptions, scams, spyware (which is, like, most software these days), et c., I'm living the anarcho-libertarian dream of paying a corporation to be my regulator. As it naturally would in the real world, this requires them to be big enough to distort and control markets, for it to be worth paying for. Does that mean they're behaving as a monopoly? Yeah, probably.

This sucks, of course, but it's what we've got.

You frame it as a conscious choice, but in my experience more than 9 of 10 Apple users are completely ignorant of the issues. They only "know what they like" or think "Apple is best. " There's no consideration at all of reasons or consequences.

I'd be willing to be those 9 out of 10 users barely know how to use a desktop computer beyond "click on the button for the internet".

I suppose that's the difference: the price they pay in user control and freedom is swapped for experiences and abilities to which they would never otherwise be exposed.

I prefer not to frame those people as ignorant in a negative way. It is we who set them up with those devices and taught them how to use them, we were just as ignorant.

I tend to agree, it's about how you manage your focus and memory in a world of distractions.

There absolutely is consideration of the reasons or consequences relevant to them, that they care about. The fact is the things you think they should care about, they just flat out don't, and that's fine.

I tend to agree with you, but it’s also definitely possible that segments of the population are unaware of issues they would care about if they were.

This, exactly.

When I have conversations with non techy friends and introduce them to my take on the privacy and consumer rights issues, and they take the time to look into the problems and think about it, they've almost always come back and said the costs in loss of rights, market diversity, ecological impacts, or simply in dollars, are not worth the value provided by huge companies like Apple and Google.

They both ruthlessly squash competition and innovation that threaten their bottom lines, but somehow project wholesome images as innovation engines and friends of consumers. They both ruthlessly exploit employees and partners, while somehow appearing to be wholesome and desirous places of employment.

They're both soulless megacorps with institutional algorithms that prevent any threat to the control over a domain of profit. When such institutions arise, outside the control of any human or group of humans in the loop, they should be forcibly broken up. That level of power and influence belongs in the hands of people, not inhuman constructs.

Certainly, the vast majority of people in rich countries can afford to care more about fashion (including bubble color) than functionality, and this is reflected in their smartphone purchases. The frustration you see in these comments comes from technologists like the OP thinking the same way and repeatedly running into leopard ate my face moments.

> Certainly, the vast majority of people in rich countries can afford to care more about fashion (including bubble color) than functionality,

I've been an iOS and Android developer—as in, paid to do it. Was an Android phone user before doing any mobile dev. Finally got my hands on IIRC a 3rd-generation Surface at work a few years back, as a test device.

Having extensive experience with the competition, I now choose Apple phones and tablets for a few reasons, functionality very much among them.

I don't doubt your experience, but I would expect you to be an outlier and that more technologists would prefer a device they can program with the same APIs as the manufacturer without any gatekeeping and non-buggy web access most of all. Having better photo sharing and phone call capabilities, less device restarts, notification filtering, the ability to caption audio for times when having the speaker on is inconvenient or not loud enough, and supporting restricted guest accounts are also features that most people who don't worry as much about fashion would not want to give up.

> I would expect you to be an outlier and that more technologists would prefer a device they can program with the same APIs as the manufacturer without any gatekeeping and non-buggy web access most of all.

I doubt most "technologists" care about writing code for their phone to begin with, and I don't know what you mean by "non-buggy web access". That doesn't mean I think most "technologists" would pick Apple (I really don't know) but I don't think I'm the outlier here, preferences-wise, even if I am on which platform I choose.

> Having better photo sharing and phone call capabilities, less device restarts

Photo sharing's never been a problem—what am I missing? I don't talk on the phone much so maybe that's actually terrible (it seems entirely fine?) and I just don't know it. Device restarts? How often do you think I restart my iOS devices?

> the ability to caption audio for times when having the speaker on is inconvenient or not loud enough

That is cool. Not something I'd use personally, but it's cool.

> supporting restricted guest accounts are also features that

Account management is my biggest complaint about I-devices. Mostly the iPad—I don't really care if iPhones continue to have only two modes (full, and PIN-restricted "screen time" mode—which I don't use anyway, so I wouldn't mind if that disappeared, really) but true multi-account would be great on the iPad.

> most people who don't worry as much about fashion would not want to give up.

Hahahaha.

> I doubt most "technologists" care about writing code for their phone to begin with

I program my computing devices constantly, and with my phone being a computing device I have near me almost all the time, I naturally program that as well.

> I don't know what you mean by "non-buggy web access".

Webkit is extremely buggy and the only supported way to access the web on iOS. On other platforms, if one engine is buggy, I can use another.

> Photo sharing's never been a problem—what am I missing?

Uploading photos to your server in the background.

> I don't talk on the phone much so maybe that's actually terrible

You can't route calls through other services, you can't record calls (which the first makes trivially possible), you can't have your phone answer the call for you and show you a realtime transcription or save the transcription for later viewing, you can't have the phone wait on hold for you, etc. The iPhone is extremely limited as a phone.

> Device restarts? How often do you think I restart my iOS devices?

Every single time you need to update a system app.

The same can be said for Android users. Are you really taking the snobby attitude that 'real' technical people would hack together their phone from parts and open source software?

All of today's desktop browsers come with developer tools built in. How many people know that, and how many know how to use them?

Many Android phones come with unlockable bootloaders. Again, how many of those who bought such a phone know about this capability?

What I'm trying to say that it's fine to sell a device in a locked down state. What's not fine, however, is not providing an unlocking mechanism, possibly deliberately well-hidden like it is in case of Android bootloaders, for those who know what they're doing.

> That's funny, he believes he owns an Apple device. Sorry, no. Apple locks down the device with strong crypto and rents you limited permissions, they sell a computing service, not a device. Apple are the only ones who get to say what code ultimately runs on their hardware.

If you buy a car, is it your car? You very possibly cannot do things with it independently, on your own, without manufacturer involvement or without voiding any warranties you have. The same idea extends to many things. I'm defending Apple here, but this idea that it's not your own device is silly IMO.

(prediction: I'll probably get downvoted)

I'm not really sure I follow this logic as when you buy a car you can do whatever you want to it without effecting the warranty as proven by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 which states that only if the modification is directly responsible for the issue could it be grounds to not service under warranty.

What if you mess around with, say, the OS on a Tesla?

My argument is not about cars, really, it's just a point I'm trying to make.

If it doesn't cause an accident, I don't see the issue. I'd love to hack on a Tesla OS.

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 was likely created for a reason. If the same reason is valid for modifying the OS on a Tesla, then either the law still apply or the law need to be updated to include the words "also valid if done in software".

I heard you cannot remove the seatbelt.

Yes, but if you do remove the seatbelt that does not void the warranty on the engine.

More to the point, with a car if you modify it you may very well render it illegal to operate on a public highway. Same can certainly apply to a phone’s use of the cell network.

I'm very fine with voiding my warranty when doing modifications to the system, but all I want is to run custom software in the userspace (at least). That's how computers work and Apple wants us to consider their devices computers[0].

Some people might want to have full access to the OS, but allowing custom software in the userspace would still be a huge step and enough for most people.

p.s. It's hard to compare a computing device to a car because what's an equivalent of usespace in car? Changing oil? Changing tires? You can do it yourself, you can even change spark plugs, without voiding your warranty.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI-iJcC9JUc

I don’t believe the author is under any such illusion or confusion. It seems clear from the precisely worded text of the article that he’s perfectly aware of the circumstances, doesn’t like them, and is willing to articulate that in public with a specific example.

By all means throw shade at Apple for tripping on a power complex that puts Battersea to shame, but insulting this writer’s awareness doesn’t fly. They are not such a fool as suggested.

> and you are responsible for recycling the outdated hardware instead of returning it to the owner

You're not telling the truth.

Apple will recycle any device for you for free. They may even pay you for it if it's in reasonable condition and reasonably recent.

Well, no. Legally you do own the device with all it's molecules. It is just a limited, damaged device.

This is one of thoses cases where I agree with the free market people that competition is good. If there were more companies that made Apple devices, then you would be able to buy a non-defective Apple device, too.

And: In a rational society, I could just download the source code and make the change myself. Actually, in a rational society the people that make the computers would not be incentivized to artifically restrict them!

And only if he wants to publish it in the store; with a developer certificate he can install his own app on his own device whenever he pleases.

But if you make something for the world at large, you should stick to the rules. They're not unreasonable, and they are one reason why iOS devices are some of the most secure devices out there.

> and you are responsible for recycling the outdated hardware instead of returning it to the owner.

I grokked everything up to this comment. Apple has extensive trade-in and recycle programs [1],[2]. Or did you mean something else?

[1]:https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in

[2]:https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/

You are confusing the hardware with the software.

You own the hardware. You license but do not own the software (as is the case with almost all software nowadays, including FOSS software). If the software from Apple is not to your liking, jailbreak the hardware and install software that is more to your liking.

This might take some effort as newer releases of Apple software are harder to jailbreak so you might have to stop installing new Apple OS releases to give the jailbreaks a chance to catch up to what is on your phone.

It's funny - because we ALSO have folks posting on HN upset that things like tiktok want multi-cast permissions / local device discovery.

In particular, the author complains about "prostrating" themselves, when they actually want to write apps that would run on ANY users device that could have relatively serious privacy implications because instead of providing a specific service they want to do a wildcard discovery.

> The confusion is common due to the specific way the lease agreement is structured

Also the button on apple.com says "Buy now" not "Rent now".

  > they sell a computing service

if anything its becoming more like "consumption" service than "computing"

Your argument gets us nowhere. Because we accept the control Apple currently has, we are entitled to nothing and should accept any arbitrary change? No, that's not how it works. We accept the walled garden in a mutually beneficial exchange.

I think you're a little confused about the role of a peasant in a dictatorship.

> Because we accept the control Apple currently has, we are entitled to nothing and should accept any arbitrary change?

Nothing has changed, Apple maintained full control all the time. You have absolutely no power in this matter and no rights, you are simply a revenue source, the only thing you can do is cease supplying money to Apple.

I fully support Apple remote bricking all hardware past a certain age to drive the sales of newer models. It's just a matter of time until you will start to see phones with "3 years limited software support". Once the 3 years are done, a splashscreen appears warning you that the device is no longer supported and insecure, thus unusable.

It's a very similar scam to buying a timeshare. The marketing pitch is "ownership" but what you are really buying is a contractual commitment to pay rent in perpetuity.

>That's funny, he believes he owns an Apple device. Sorry, no.

It sounds remarkably like a video game console or a stereo receiver.

That makes sense really since the main purpose of a consumer computer at this point is to, well, 'consume'.

It's funny to think back on an era when the average privately-owned computer was bought to actually do something useful.

Sounds like it needs regulation.

Hilarious, but not real. You can install whatever you want on your phone, but you can't do it through the app store.

With a host MacOS computer and a certificate that expires after 7 days.

Whereas on Android you can simply download the APK from within the device. No host PC needed. No developer cert. No expiry.

I believe the way these "by request only" entitlements work is that the OS locks you out of the functionality entirely if you don't hold them.

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