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Comment by haswell | Hacker News Reader

I work on a platform that provides its subscribers with a store for 1st and 3rd party apps/solutions built on that platform.

Every app delivered on this store must go through the same review process whether it's internally built or not. This has led to healthy innovation on the app store and deep empathy for the 3rd party developer.

To be fair, it is possible to ship components that are part of the core platform outside of this mechanism, but I think just having one subset of internal development go through the same review/approval channels as 3rd party apps has been very positive for our developer community.

I'd love to see the same thing here.

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So what is the platform?

If I had to guess it would be something like Slack, Shopify, Squarespace or some other SaaS platform that needs to meet the needs of a hugely diverse customer base.

I’d prefer not to name the specific platform to maintain anonymity, but you’re in the right ballpark.

Somewhat obvious if you check their submission history.

Do you run 1p and 3p code in the same environment? That’s frequently the challenge mobile operators run into - the OS needs privileged access to location services (eg 911) that it can’t grant untrusted code.

OP isn't saying the OS goes through the same review processes, but (some) 1p apps do.

For example, Apple Music should not have privileged access to location services - it should be using the exact same location APIs and permissions as 3p apps.

All Apple apps go through review & many have the same requirements/restrictions as 3p apps. I read OPs statement more forcefully than you may have:

> Every app delivered on this store must go through the same review process whether it's internally built or not

Believe it or not, but internal Apps go through an even more stringent review as they have Apple branding. The exception is they're allowed various privileges that wouldn't be appropriate for 3p apps (security or even that a framework isn't quite ready for prime time & needs some bake time with internal users for whom back compat isn't a concern).

> That’s frequently the challenge mobile operators run into - the OS needs privileged access to location services (eg 911) that it can’t grant untrusted code.

It doesn't actually need this. The phone app can just ask for permission to access your location, which you would then give it when you call 911 because you want the emergency responders to know where you are.

Anyone who really wants to can already deny the phone their location by using a Faraday cage with a WiFi access point in it so the phone has internet but no GPS or cellular triangulation. You can't prevent it by not allowing the user to deny the permission.

There is no excuse for special permissions.

Calling 911 is one of those times when I really, really don't want to see permission popups. If I'm in a car crash, I ain't going to be lucid enough to make sure the permissions are set properly. I am almost certain there are legal restrictions in this direction.

moonlightop

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