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Comment by miramba | Hacker News Reader

I used to think the same way, but not anymore. The amount and variety of attacks on the devices have increased too much in the last years. The device could be encrypted, money could be stolen, some malware could sit silently and do surveillance for who knows. I always wanted to install software on my iPhone without the manufacturing company deciding what I can and can not have (according to californian standards!), but would I let my kids do that nowadays? No way! Stay on the app stores, also on Windows and MacOS is the first line of defense. It‘s sad but the safest approach. Regular users don‘t need to install software on their own anymore, the same as they don‘t need to put processors, storage and Monitors together or install a sound card.

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The App Store is a poor line of defense, because it isn't about user security, it's about securing Apple's billion dollar app distribution monopoly moneyhose. User security is just a rhetorical afterthought.

When we forgo real system safety in favor of gatekeeping corporate revenue, that isn't security. In fact, such a scheme is responsible for mass distribution of malware. Apple's App Store is responsible for distributing over half a billion copies of Xcodeghost to iPhone and iPad users[1], and that's just one piece of malware.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-trial-is...

I think you need to look at the system of incentives and alignment

If apple's billion dollar app distribution monopoly money hose results in security problems for people, then their billion dollar app distribution monopoly money hose will be in jeopardy since it's justification comes into question.

So what you see as a problem is what makes me feel the best about it. Apple is aligned with only secure apps on their store and apple is very unaligned with insecure apps.

To apple security is not just a cost center, but a pillar of the justification for their monopoly position.

It's a poor justification. You can cleanly implement a signing system for trusted developers (they've done it before), and it's obviously possible to distribute iPhone package files. All the pieces are in place, if it weren't for their $80 billion annual hayday then they wouldn't be dying on this hill in particular.

Maybe part of it is this security alignment issue, but upon scrutiny it's clearly a small and solvable piece of the puzzle. Imagine if Keurig tried using user safety to justify a 30% cut off every K-cup sold. Such an ecosystem is doomed to fail, especially at-scale and with completely arbitrary enforcement.

It sounds more like you’re upset about apples revshare model on their channel; Why do you care if all your competitors also have to pay it?

I don’t think the world got better because we got more channels on Tv, and I even think some of them might be dangerous and harmful to life…

> Why do you care if all your competitors also have to pay it?

Did you ever publish to appstore ? The amount of bullshit you have to go through so that an alternative payment method isn't reachable from mobile is insane, and they want % of a lot of things, not just sales/subscription - a lot of business ideas are unviable because of the policy.

Not to mention that your competitors don't have to pay the same, big players get special deals and exemptions, and Apple has first party advantage on the platform.

> Did you ever publish to appstore ?

Yes.

> The amount of bullshit you have to go through so that an alternative payment method isn't reachable from mobile is insane, and they want % of a lot of things

You say insane, but you don't say why. Revenue-sharing is the best for content producers; I would definitely not want to go back to the retail model. What exactly are you trying to do?

> a lot of business ideas are unviable because of the policy.

A lot of business ideas are unviable without slavery! So what? I don't want that, and I hope you don't either! So what is it you actually want?

> Not to mention that your competitors don't have to pay the same, big players get special deals and exemptions,

I don't compete with "big players". If Apple didn't make an iPhone and I didn't make an app to put on it, I wouldn't get that money, and pretending otherwise won't make it so. The people I am competing with are in the same situation I'm in, and if they're getting success and I'm not, I think I should worry about what I can do.

> A lot of business ideas are unviable without slavery! So what? I don't want that, and I hope you don't either! So what is it you actually want?

Did you just compare freedom to choose alternative payment method to slavery? What a bizarre world, I don't know why I've even bothered to reply to your comments, lol.

> I don't compete with "big players". If Apple didn't make an iPhone and I didn't make an app to put on it, I wouldn't get that money, and pretending otherwise won't make it so. The people I am competing with are in the same situation I'm in, and if they're getting success and I'm not, I think I should worry about what I can do.

You're dictators wet dream.

"Don't care about unfair system, dig within yourself! If competitor is doing good under dictatorship it means the problem is within you!"

> Did you just compare freedom to choose alternative payment method to slavery?

Not at all. I said some businesses should not be viable and gave the simplest possible example I could think of.

And you did not agree.

Shame on you.

> You're dictators wet dream. "Don't care about unfair system, dig within yourself! If competitor is doing good under dictatorship it means the problem is within you!"

You're still not saying what you want to do and why it is good for society, just that the "dictator" is stopping you from doing it. "Alternative payments" can mean all sorts of things from money laundering to easier-to-steal, and I can't support those things.

You've described literally every platform and physical store under the sun except desktop OSes.

> It sounds more like you’re upset about apples revshare model on their channel; Why do you care if all your competitors also have to pay it?

There's a Ukrainian saying

> Хрін з ним, що своя хата згоріла, головне у сусіда корова здохла

Which literally translates to "Who cares if house is burnt down, the most important is that neighbors' cow is dead" - that's you. Ever thought that maybe you and/or your comptetitor shouldn't have to pay in the first place or that shares are unfair?

> Ever thought that maybe ... shares are unfair?

No actually. I won't ever enter any other kind of business-relationship with a larger company unless they have real competition that affects price because my experience is that larger company will try to mess you up if there's any chance at short-term gain. A joint-venture is ideal protection, but with Apple my size makes that unlikely. Revenue-sharing is a fine alternative to me, and if my product becomes worth more than my share I can always renegotiate, even with a big company like Apple, because we both want the revenue to continue. That's the point.

The pure-play alternative is much harder for small companies and individuals because they need cash up-front to get into the market, but I do understand the advantages for big pockets who don't create value though -- I just don't have any intention of being a company so big that my only purpose in life is to group-together smaller companies that aren't good enough to survive on their own.

That's fine. I'm not arguing for more channels, I just want them to let me use it for things other than the pre-approved and Apple-sponsored channels. This is akin to your TV manufacturer removing your HDMI input to force you to pay for cable.

Erm, Apple shares the cable subscription revenue with the people who make the content.

People like me.

You are literally talking about stealing my money. To me.

And this doesn’t seem strange to you?

> then their billion dollar app distribution monopoly money hose will be in jeopardy

It only comes under jeopardy, if there are reasonable alternatives the Apple app store (not move to Android).

Otherwise, it's easy for Apple to say - we are now taking step x, y and z, and "trust us".

As a further separate but distinct response:

You are justifying why a monopoly app store is bad by showing a hack that resulted from downloading an app (xcode) from a source other than the app store.

  Security firm Palo Alto Networks surmised that because network speeds 
  were slower in China, developers in the country looked for local 
  copies of the Apple Xcode development environment, and encountered 
  altered versions that had been posted on domestic web sites. This 
  opened the door for the malware to be inserted into high profile apps 
  used on iOS devices.

I think you are also ignoring that apples app store position made it possible to authoritatively reach out to all who were effected as well as enact other remediation efforts.

This just shows that the App Store model is insufficient for user security, as the the security model was supposed to prevent malware from being distributed to users in the first place, no matter what malicious developers upload to the App Store. If Apple treats Xcode as App Store blessed because it believes it came from blessed sources like the App Store, instead of using real security measures, exploits will continue to be shipped to users. Similarly, if OSes don't implement real security that's independent of the App Store model, users will continue to be exploited in this way.

> I think you are also ignoring that apples app store position made it possible to authoritatively reach out to all who were effected as well as enact other remediation efforts.

Microsoft is able to do the same thing with Windows Defender without using the App Store model at all.

I can't give you a black and white response because I don't think the issue is as black and white as most seem to.

I think the app store is a tool and I think it is a powerful and useful tool. Can the tool be used for good? of course. Can it also be used for bad? most definitely. Can it be wielded poorly? yes.

I've used windows, linux, apple, and android, and I like Apple's environment the best. That environment is a consequence of apples choices. Apple limits my choices and I like that. I like having less choices. I don't want to have to think about software security, I want to think about how to spend time with my friends, and apple is a an environment that lets me think about how best to spend time with friends instead of thinking about software security.

Apple's restriction of my choices benefits me. I want apple to restrict my choices. I want there to be only one way to get apps on my device. That simplifies my life. I will pay more to have a more simple life. I will pay someone else to make better choices than I can make with my limited time. I want to do that.

If you don't like that, then don't use Apple. There is a perfectly working alternative to apple that you can use if you want to experience other choices. Apple has a monopoly on apple devices, but apple by no means has a monopoly on smart phones. I'm not sure there are even any major apps exclusive to apple. Apple is better because apple has more money to spend.

> Microsoft is able to do the same thing with Windows Defender without using the App Store model at all.

If apple scanned the apps I side-loaded and reported information about them to their servers that would upset me, that feels like a privacy violation.

Apple's bullying of companies with monopoly power to force privacy labels won me over greatly. They have a lot of good will for that. If apple continues to do things like that, I will continue to support an app store monopoly.

> Apple limits my choices and I like that. I like having less choices. I don't want to have to think about software security

How does this conflict with other users having a developer mode? Because you want Apple to have more unilateral authority over what other businesses are and aren't allowed to do?

It sounds like you have left the domain of "what's right for the market" and headed into the realm of "what I prefer". That's fine and decent anecdata, but completely useless to regulators who's job is to save the market. If Apple is stifling innovation or competition, even for a good cause, then we must codify the goodness and end the monopoly. That's progress, arbitrary corporate grudges are not.

It's an absurd argument. If you want to only install app store apps, then only install apps from the store. That's still possible you know, even if other people aren't forced to. That's why these arguments always boil down to bullshit about how you will be "forced" to use Facebook from outside the store and that would be terrible because being on Facebook on an iPhone is a human right or something.

If you like Apple telling you what to do, fine. Choose only from their menu.

If you don't like apple telling you what to do, use Android?

Apple products are the consequences of Apples decisions, you want what Apple produces but reject their decisions.

What if Apple's phone is better because it is a closed ecosystem?

Nobody is saying that. They're saying use an iPhone and then don't sideload apps. Easy!

> Microsoft is able to do the same thing with Windows Defender without using the App Store model at all.

But not for a lack of trying. Windows has tried to retrofit their App Store, just less successfully. One good example is the code signing racket, where it’s pay to play to avoid useless warnings that scare off people who don’t know better.

Look, you can somewhat reasonably prove the origin of a piece of software, but a domain name x509 cert would be better (only difference is validity needs to handle longer time ranges). The issue is all the “trusted” yadda yadda. Doesn’t matter if it’s an App Store, a holy enterprise certificate trafficker or the pope himself doing the blessing, it just doesn’t hold up. Maybe they could have a herd-protection like VSCode extensions: “50M+ users” so when I see an executable called “Facebook” with “35 users” I can stop and make my own judgment that it looks fishy. But that’s about UX for checking the vendor matches who you think it is, not blessing it.

> Similarly, if OSes don't implement real security that's independent of the App Store model, users will continue to be exploited in this way.

Spot on! Here’s the thing: sandboxing software on any of the big operating systems wasn’t there from the beginning, and that’s the billion dollar mistake. Sandboxing is the only real game changer in end-user security with iPhone/android over desktop, not the monopolistic app stores. Tbf, Apple at least has tried really hard to bring sandboxing to desktop but even they are not there yet. These mega corps should imo have seen it coming a decade earlier, when the web became vastly popular platform, much thanks to sandboxing.

So take five minutes to set up the parental controls on your children's devices. The idea that we should eliminate the ability to run arbitrary software "for the children" is completely ridiculous.

Then don’t buy an iPhone. I think it’s ridiculous that we are asking the government to save us from our own choices.

As much as you and I don’t like it, what Apple is doing is perfectly legal. And as much as you or I might support a change in the law, you’re not going to get my support if the legislation is truly universal and not just a narrow-band targeting of a single company for developing an ecosystem which resonated with a large number of people. Write some legislation which applies to ALL platforms which run software and maybe I’ll take it seriously.

> Then don't buy an iPhone

Then don't enable side loading.

And what Apple is doing is actually not perfectly legal. That's the entire reason they're changing their policies. It's not like they enjoy having to compete with app stores that offer other payment providers or allow things like emulators.

I know how to not enable side-loading. There are a dozen friends and family members who I provide tech support to and I don't trust any of them to never follow the clearly written instructions which Epic will provide showing how to sideload Fortnite onto their phone.

Sure, maybe Epic can be trusted. But perhaps Meta decides that the latest/most desirable versions of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have to be side-loaded. Now it's commonplace. Now everyone's phone has sideloaded apps installed.

Sure, maybe Meta can be trusted. But perhaps some new future TikTok-esque craze besets the mainstream, and it's in the form of a sideloaded app, made easy because sideloaded apps aren't unusual, and the company who makes this viral app is dodgy as f***.

But sure, it's always the user's choice.

> As much as you and I don’t like it, what Apple is doing is perfectly legal.

Well, not in EU now

Sometimes our choices lead us to results that no one wanted. For a classical example, check out "tragedy of the commons". In those cases, you do want someone to enforce cooperation from outside, and this is what's happening to Apple now.

> what Apple is doing is perfectly legal

Not in the EU starting this summer!

Although I agree with the second point: game consoles being general purpose computers should be treated the same.

> Then don’t buy an iPhone. I think it’s ridiculous that we are asking the government to save us from our own choices.

That's a great argument. I have even a better one:

Don't dictate what and how people use their devices that they paid for with their hard-earned money.

Yes it's your device, but it's not your software. You don't own the software. And it's the software which is stopping you from doing what you want.

All software effectively "dictates" how a device works, whether you're talking about an OS or an app. If you buy an app, you don't get to decide how it works. You don't like it? Don't buy it. I don't see a big push for people crying to the government to stop Activision from dictating how to play Call of Duty.

Apple doesn't dictate what software runs on your iPhone, any more than a toaster manufacturer dictates whether you can use it as a space heater, or Toyota dictating whether your car can function as a boat, or Epic Games dictating whether Fortnite can be used to prepare your taxes.

It's true that Apple doesn't make the process of running your own software easy, but you are legally entitled to break whatever barriers you like and replace the OS with a Linux distro. Have at it. It's great. I support it. And if you want legislation that requires hardware manufacturers to provide documented paths for installing alternative operating system software, I'd support that legislation eight days a week.

It's not "the government saving us from our own choices".

It's us asking our democratically elected government to stop a giant corporation from telling us what to do with our own devices.

I like how you say that as though I hadn't already considered that point. Would it be too much to ask to perhaps give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm already aware of all of the major arguments for why Apple should allow sideloading?

Yes it's your device, but it's not your software. You don't own the software. And it's the software which is stopping you from doing what you want.

Really though I'm just saying that I resent arguments that fail to provide anything resembling a modicum of consistency around this. As far as I'm concerned, as long as Sony is allowed to keep the PlayStation locked down, Apple should have equal right to keep the iPhone locked down. And if you, the consumer, doesn't like it, don't buy a PlayStation. I realise this comes across as a trite, throwaway thing to say, but I absolutely mean it. It is, in my opinion, a slam dunk argument.

I think if you own the device, you do own the software, or framed the opposite way, if you don't own the software, you don't own the device

What you're proposing is not really ownership of the device in any meaningful way, but just a license to use it on somebody else's terms.

I don't want a world in which I don't own the device I pay for, so neither Sony nor Apple should be able to dictate what I do with them.

It's like selling you a screwdriver and then saying you can only use it with one specific brand of screw.

It's really nothing like your terrible analogy. Bad analogies are bad.

Ownership of software is clear-cut under the law: unless you hold the copyright, it's not yours. You have been granted permission to use the software under the restricted terms of a license. In practice though, the legal perspective isn't a useful one. It's another bad analogy, useful only because it's the one backed by law. What actually matters is what you can do.

It doesn't matter who "owns" it, you don't have the code needed to recompile the OS from source. Much less than sideloading apps, there are thousands of nominally trivial aspects of the OS which you cannot change without source code and a working build environment. Without this you don't have any ownership over the software in any useful sense.

You do own your piece of physical iPhone hardware, and it's yours to muck about with as much as you wish. But don't expect schematics or the ability to manufacture your own parts, or the ability to sideload more processing cores into the A14 chip, or replace the camera with a different module.

> As far as I'm concerned, as long as Sony is allowed to keep the PlayStation locked down.

I'm sure that now that the EU has finally woken up, gaming platforms will be under scrunity too. Mobile phones are a much more critical part of people's lives than game consoles, so it made sense to target them first.

I'm really not sure, because as much as the Hacker News crowd wants to believe otherwise, the entities exerting political pressure on Apple aren't doing so for the reasons you care about. It may result in an outcome you favour, but that's just a coincidence.

> I think it’s ridiculous that we are asking the government to save us from our own choices.

So you think it's better asking companies to save us from our own choices? And that doesn't strike you as even more ridiculous?

I think it's ridiculous that you think it sounds ridiculous. If people actually cared about this stuff, there would be a massive market opportunity for a competitor to make a product that satisfied people's demands. But they don't, so there isn't.

Most of the noise in the community is from people who just enjoy seeing Apple squirm and probably aren't even an Apple customer anyway. Meanwhile the entities spending real money to lobby governments on this issue actually only care about getting around Apple's increasingly consumer-protecting app review process — they tolerated the 30% fee right up until the very same month that Apple started forcing developers to inform users if they were tracking users between apps.

They want side-loading so they can track you, not so they can extract more money from you. Because they know they won't. Yes, entities like Epic might be able to sell apps with a lower marginal cost (not a lot lower, as they'll be handling stuff like fraud and refunds themselves, and Apple is still entitled to a software license fee) but the simple act of requiring consumers to enter their credit card number into an app is going to reduce transaction completion rates. I'd be willing to bet by at least 30%.

The security on the iPhone is from the app sandbox, not from app review.

It's trivial to get something past app review (eg. look at casino apps that were disguised as games)

On the Mac, staying on the Mac App Store makes sense because it is the easiest way to enforce you only install sandboxed apps.

On iOS, that's not going to be necessary, because every app on iOS is sandboxed.

> On the Mac, staying on the Mac App Store makes sense because it is the easiest way to enforce you only install sandboxed apps.

As an aside, I do believe you can use sandboxd with apps outside of the App Store, someone just has to write security policies for them.

This page suggests that Apple might want to deprecate use of sandboxd in favor of just the App Store[1], though.

[1] https://codeberg.org/valpackett/rusty-sandbox

> I do believe you can use sandboxd with apps outside of the App Store

Yes, you can, it's trivial to do so. However, Apple does not make it easy to find out if an app is sandboxed or not, or what permissions it has.

The warning that macOS shows when opening an app not from the Mac App Store does not differentiate between sandboxed and non-sandboxed apps.

And how exactly the AppStore prevents it? By using the OSs sandbox, which will apply the exact same way to user installed programs — you won’t suddenly run as root.

AppStore checking is waaay overhyped as anything meaningful.

I used to think that way, but then I realized the Android/iOS stores are absolute cesspools. I would not trust young kids on there either.

Others are right, sandboxing is the real saving grace (and only if apps dont ask for a bajillion permissions which users will just click through so it will work). Apple is slowly trying to isolate apps even more, like they were in the early iOS days.

I used to think like you, but not anymore. I am not interested in installing random software from other people, I want to install my own software to be able to have full control over my own device.

I don't care about 'regular users'. I care about myself.

You can do that already.

If you own a mac, run a specific software at least once a week, and limited to like 3 apps. For all practical purposes, this means “you can’t”.

Not only do you have to own a mac, you have to keep everything updated to the latest version. This is problematic, considering that the OS gets worse and worse with every release, and some things break with new versions.

> If you own a Mac

If you own an iPhone, it's actually very practical to also have a Mac.

> run a specific software at least once a week, and limited to like 3 apps.

What?

You get a license for a week only (without paying for a dev account), and has a limit of concurrently signing at most 7 apps (my parameters might not be exactly correct, but are roughly this), but a single application might require multiple signatures.

The most common way to make all this signing a bit more bearable is to have AltStore installed on your mac, which will automatically re-signs the select few apps you want in some hacky way (needs your Apple id and password).

The most common way is to pay $99 and use Xcode. I think in the long run, limiting the freedom of developers to choose whichever tools they like is actually hurting Apple, but let's not pretend that there is no practical way of running your own software on iOS.

Is that were true there would be no need for a European version, since sideloading is about a "practical way of running your own software".

My answers refer to ihatepython's original comment, and own software is understood there as "software I develop myself". I am not talking about own software in the sense of software you obtained from other people, which is what sideloading is about.

> The most common way is to pay $99 and use Xcode.

Don't you find it ridiculous that the "common" way to run software written by you on a $1k device that you bought is via buying $2k machine and paying 99$ yearly?

If I pay the fee and/or use something like altstore?

Yes.

But it's an user choice! Same happens on Android. There is a settings that you have to enable to install applications from other sources.

This is pure nonsense... giving user more choices is never a bad thing.

We should probably get rid of Safari / web browsers too in that case!

> Regular users don‘t need to install software on their own anymore, the same as they don‘t need to put processors, storage and Monitors together or install a sound card.

Uhuh, sure.

"Shut your mouth, pay and be happy"

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