Hacker News Reader

Comment by justapassenger | Hacker News Reader

Would they? If 90% of users stay on apple App Store, they won’t.

It’s all about value they can provide, both sides.

Lots of people just care about getting stuff done, amd don’t care about these kinds of arguments. So if having to click yes on a pop up to get the fb/adobe store is what they need to do, to do what they want, they’ll just do it.

We’ll basically lose a whole stack of the guarantees about data, app operation that Apple was able to enforce on hostile, belligerent companies like fb because of their position.

I still cannot get my head around that people on the site called “hacker news” are advocating for closed systems controlled by trillion dollars companies being good.

I trust Apple to design their operating system to be secure, without having to lock me in.

And isn’t Facebook dead and not used by anyone?

Yes Facebook is dead, only 2 BILLION daily active users

They can still have strict privacy permission controls at the OS level, regardless of where an app is installed from. They’ll just also have to give the same controls over their own software.

Not really. Let's say Facebook asked for location permission and the user says No. Today the app will be forced to work without it. By Apple Store rules. Tomorrow the app will say "this permission is required for app to work".

Apple could just set it up in privacy settings to allow location spoofing if you wish. They could even make it automatically change occasionally within your region. Facebook would have no idea if the location data was correct or not

Sure, but if getting the Adobe Reader involves downloading and installing the Adobe Store, creating an account, and finding and installing Adobe Reader there, lots of people will prefer using the next best app that's on the app store they already use. Convenience cuts both ways: yes, you can get people to do stupid things, but if installing your competitor takes one tap where installing your app takes ten you are going to lose market share.

That hasnt happened on android

Because you don’t need to on Android.

Googles standards for the App Store are low and they’re more than happy to let apps exfiltrate basically whatever user data they want.

Do you remember the hissy fits developers-and more notably advertisers-threw when Apple went “no you can’t have fine grained GPS unless you have a valid reason” and “the app still has to work even if the user declines sharing data”.

Imagine if Snapchat said "if you download the sideload version your snaps will continue to auto delete, but if you download the Official App Store version, every snap you send will be stored forever and never deleted from our servers".

I can tell you right now which one, Kristie, the 17 year old High Schooler is going to download. She'll then unknowingly be giving away all sorts or privacy away on the sideloaded version, under the guise of a marketed, more "in your face" privacy feature.

Sounds like a great way for Snapchat to undercut themselves and cause a competitor to arise.

That's a problem better solved by providing more granular, user-controlled limits on app permissions at the OS level than by locking down the 'ecosystem' and further removing users' control over their own devices.

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