Tim Cook: Users Who Want to Sideload Apps Can Use Android | Hacker News Reader

Tim Cook: Users Who Want to Sideload Apps Can Use Android

macrumors.com

35 pointsnsnante48 comments

Sideloading seems like an exotic and vaguely illicit sounding way of saying "installing applications not from Apple's app store". This is kind of the mirror image of phrasing it like "install apps without paying Apple 30%"

Annoyingly, entrenched powers have the podium and often claim the prerogative of coining the terminology for the debate. Not that they don't have a somewhat defensible position in terms of security. But an effective Apple and Android smartphone duopoly hardly makes the decisions of one player some neutral "let the free market sort it out" kind of proposition.

True, but it is also a word used in the Android ecosystem which refers more or less to installing applications not from the Google Play store.

I couldn't have Japanese TV service on my livingroom screen, without loading an .apk file directly from the provider onto the Android box.

Tim Cook's analogies with cars, air bags and seatbelts are what is disingenuous, not so much the sideloading word, which is a foregone given.

A better analogy is that the Apple car is one that refuses to take certain exits off the freeway, or shortcuts that are not charted in the guidance system.

It's about choice. I'm a tech head and can easily root phones if I need to. But increasingly, the mobile phone is a key life tool and I'd rather that it works like a fully managed appliance. I'm willing to pay the Apple tax to blissfully live safely in their walled garden. Absolutely no need to wail and rant about Apple and their App Store practices constantly. Just use Android.

The ability to sideload apps has nothing to do with that though.

Do you work for Apple?

"Blissfully live safely in their walled garden"

I'm sorry to call you out, but this sounds ridiculous. It has nothing to do with safety. If you care about safety, you shouldn't be satisfied with a curated experience. You should demand it from the OS capabilities regardless of where the app comes from.

“ You should demand it from the OS capabilities regardless of where the app comes from.”

That sounds like a quote from Tim Cook. Seriously though, if the commenter is happy with Apple and how it fits their work patterns then why do you need to call them out? I’m consistently confused about the mental horsepower spent on this debate when the solution is really simple: if you don’t like a product, don’t buy it. I think Tesla’s look lame, so I don’t own one. I don’t like Twinkies, so I don’t buy them.

I guess my point is - wuu saa

I definitely lean more towards the libertarian side of things, but in instances like this I do think the monopoly/antitrust arguments carry some weight. Apple and Google both DOMINATE the mobile market; and it's not an insignificant market. Unseated Microsoft from decades of dominating how the vast majority of computing power was used almost overnight.

I think it's LONG past time for both Apple and Google to be forced to offer mechanisms that are far less onerous for third party app stores than the hoops and fear mongering Google makes you go through on Android.

If Apple and/or Google were actually successful on delivering a fraction of their promises about safety and security in their app stores that would be one thing - but they don't even appear to be trying, despite all their bluster to the contrary.

If you're a tech head, wouldn't you be just as safe on Android?

Except for all their talk to the contrary, Apple's walled garden is hardly safe. Scam apps continually dominate the top grossing apps sales charts.

OBVIOUS scam apps. They aren't even that cleverly hidden - and yet Apple is slow to deal with them - if ever.

I too once was pro-walled garden. If the promise is realized, it would indeed be nice to have at least one platform that was a safe haven - not having to think but being able to just trust and use.

Except Apple didn't deliver their promise. And with the obviously political motivation to remove Parlor - screw them. I'm now firmly in the camp of there needs to be alternative app stores, and they need to be easier to install with less bombastic warnings than Google puts when you try to enable side-loading with Android.

I've been "side loading" on macOS and Windows for decades and the world hasn't ended. No sure why I bought into their BS with iOS initially, but after a decade of them failing to deliver it's now patently obvious that it was (and always was) complete and utter bull shit.

The last anarchism of Steve Job's control fetish - time to blow it up. If Apple really is delivering the best overall app store experience then they shouldn't have a damn thing to worry about. Path of least resistance and all that.

But they aren't. And they haven't had to care, nor will they ever have to care, unless they are forced to compete. When I think of all the apps that could be but aren't because of Apple's downright hostile attitudes towards developers (at least sharecroppers were often acknowledged for bringing landowners some value), inconsistent applications of the rules, sudden reversals on previous stances - it's even more vexxing. It's soured me so much on iOS I no longer invest any new time in it as a platform.

I've used Mac's since 1986 - and while I often wanted Apple to be more successful, I also feared what would happen if they ever got too successful. And sadly my fears seem to be justified when I look at the state of iOS.

Thankfully they haven't tried to "iOSify" macOS, and even with the new Apple Silicon machines they are open enough that you still have complete control and can even load other OS's on them. They aren't going out of their way to foster it, but they aren't actively or even passive-aggressively blocking efforts either. So there is at least some hope. But right now, iOS and its direction is an utter disappointment and I hope something or someone can snap them out of the path they are on.

Like politics, the two mobile choices seem to cover about 90% of American’s beliefs.

In other words: you’ll have to pry my iPhone out of my cold, dead, hands.

The security argument Apple has been spinning for so many years is a fallacy of the worst kind.

Like pedling life in prison, with Uncle Tim as warden, as opposed to the so much dangerous and risky life out there, in the wild, where you can do whatever you want. Like owning a Pinephone.

Aeroplanes have still crashed since the introduction of passenger screening security measures.

So since planes can still crash, we shouldn’t have airport security.

Fatal car crashes happen, so seat belts and airbags are not about safety, but about control.

Like Apple is not the only mean for computing, aeroplanes do face competition: you can walk, drive, cycle, etc. You can also own your aeroplane if other people scare you.

But the way I see it, Apple is more like one particular air company which operates aircraft without seats or windows, where customers are blindfolded, then strapped very tight on top of one another. That can be very safe travelling, and quite unpleasant at the same time.

At the advent of the iPhone, I was 100% all-in on the Apple ecosystem. However, the lack of sideloading pushed me to Android and over time I've become more and more satisfied with that choice, even though I rarely sideload applications.

I want my operating system vendor to protect me by building in strong, granular controls over my software and making it easy for me as a user to control my application software. Apple has done that with iOS (yay!) but those capabilities have little to do with the App Store review process, which is used to collect rent and block competitors to their services business model. Apple leadership continues to be disingenuous in conflating these two things.

Thanks Tim, I already was.

Keep on gatekeeping for my customers and I'll keep telling them why iphones and macs are cancer.

And they will keep on buying Apple products.

People keep smoking too...

And yes, they do. The filesystem of the original ipod convinced me that Apple didn't want to build computers that played music but instead wanted to mediate their influence. A site "anythingbutipod.com" convinced me to go forward with Cowon music players. And so it goes, if you want a real pocket computer that does what you wish, it isn't apple.

For many (including me), Apple products are real pocket computers that do everything we wish. Apple products are built with a set purpose in mind. I couldn't care less about side-loading or hacking random software onto these devices. You can't expect products built for the masses to be suitable for a minority use case.

But presumably "the masses" who use Android don't do a lot of sideloading either? I mean, I doubt they're getting adb and fastboot set up. Unless we just mean they're figuring out how to install F-droid or the Amazon App Store?

What about something like Fortnite? You might not personally be interested in the game, but surely you can imagine that some people might want to play it, and you can probably also imagine Epic not wanting to give Apple a 30% cut. How do you reconcile those two things?

Why does the commenter need to reconcile this? Their desire of using Apple doesn’t mean they need to all apps to run on it. Personally, I’m not a gamer and don’t care about Fortnite availability nor their cost of doing business on Apple. If Apple banned an app I cared enough to use, I’d probably vote with my dollars and change platforms.

Apple is fine if you do things there way. Unfortunately for those of us that know of better ways, it becomes a walled garden when we know there are better ones.

Apple meets all of my needs for most of my routine life activities and I have a rack of servers for my other stuff. The weird Apple philosophy debate has always confused me as to why people expend so much mental effort arguing about.

It's just freedom of choice. If I was rich, of course I'd buy Apple products. Simply because it's cheaper time/money wise for me to buy SaaS products and digital goods than it would be to pirate them. And Apple provides a seemless and secure means of doing so. For non-tech people, I tell them just to use Apple. For people who download and click on every damn link (like my mother...) I tell them only IpadOS. I've never had to deal with malware on it because my mother can't install it unless it's through the App store.

The problem for developers is "their way" can suddenly change without warning. There has always been anecdotes here and there about developers gettin app updates rejected for features that had been in their app for years and wasn't even the focus of the update. Sometimes they get resolved (seems the larger the twitter mob you can attract the better your chances - what a way to run a business) and sometimes they don't.

At what point do the scales of the value proposition tip to the point that more and more devs just write iOS off? How many times has that already happened that we just don't know about? I know of at least a dozen really cool apps I would have loved to have had but the devs didn't even bother because of the uncertainty of Apple's uneven application of their "rules".

bah. The cure is worse than the disease at this point.

They would have a stronger argument if their products were actually secure, yet we see regularly how nonresponsive and even combative Apple is with security researchers and how journalists and activists are constantly hacked due to zero-days. They have $200B in the bank, they could throw a few at building a respected security org that could eclipse efforts like Project Zero.

The quote:

> I think that people have that choice today, Andrew, if you want to sideload, you can buy an Android phone. That choice exists when you go into the carrier shop. If that is important to you, then you should buy an Android phone. From our point of view, it would be like if I were an automobile manufacturer telling [a customer] not to put airbags and seat belts in the car. He would never think about doing this in today's time. It's just too risky to do that. And so it would not be an iPhone if it didn't maximize security and privacy.

Maybe a better car analogy is that Apple is like an automaker who decides where their customers are allowed to drive??

and who's allowed to sit in the car with you

Apple decides which gasoline you're allowed to use, and charges a 30% tax on it.

In your analogy Apple would be charging the gas station owner 30% not the person pumping. Why should the end-user care about developers fees? Apple built the entire ecosystem and infrastructure, they should be allowed to charge whatever they like.

Adding to that, they are a middle man preventing the gas station owner to collect my number plates, bank account details and purchase data and selling those to third parties.

Cutting out the middle man just gives another corporation an advantage.

Precisely, most people are less likely to make purchases if any amount of friction is introduced. You wanna make me sign up through your payment service to use the app? No thanks. I'll pick an alternative that supports Apple Pay.

> Why should the end-user care about developers fees?

Because it's actually the end-user (sometimes unknowingly) paying this 30% fee?

The best car analogy is usually no car analogy, as the situation has nothing to do with cars.

If he’s so fond of user choice and isn’t using the argument disingenuously, then keep sideloading off the table but give all devs/users the choice to use a payment system other than Apple IAP - that’s the real issue for most people. If all other rules stayed the same but IAP became optional all this regulatory/PR pressure would drop to near-zero.

I don't see any legislative resolve to this freedom to download your app anywhere but from the EU and China.

Just like we have unlocked phones today as an option, we might have to travel to Europe or China in the future to get iOS devices without app locks on it.

I am _absolutely_ fine with apple not allowing sideloading. Call it control, or security or whatever, I am fine with it.

What I _dont_ accept is a single company automatically getting 30% from every other business in the world.

And I belive this is really what Tim is trying to defend, he is just using sideloading and security arguments to muddy the waters.

Preventing side loading allows a single company to get 30% of sales. If side loading were allowed users could purchase apps from any source they trust and make a conscious choice to install purchased apps.

If Android could make a cross platform app to work like handoff and airdrop then I would go back.

I have both options on Android. I can sideload or not sideload. On iOS I only have one choice..

And so Apple's anti-consumer, anti-freedom products continue.

You can't have everything. Giving you, but also other companies the freedom to do as they want with your phone and data could also be considered anti-consumer.

Apple is porting Android to iPhones? Neat!

I’m happy with AltStore, thank you.

I'm not. The 7 day timeout is very annoying and the windows server is spotty, due to the need to have iCloud + iTunes installed. And to periodically reinstall them when it decides that it's time to break.

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