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Comment by martimarkov | Hacker News Reader

No, I defend it because I actually do not want that. I prefer the Apple experience. I control all my subscriptions from a single place, I only get stuff from the App Store and if I get tricked to buy an app that is not working I can request a refund and I’ve never had issues getting my money back. I also haven’t had a single issue with anyone from my family getting scammed or their details being stolen after switching the to Apple. Before it was a constant “accidental” subscriptions and random installed apps.

What actually annoys me are the developers wanting everything for “free”. Look you customer chose to buy an iPhone. Accept it. You don’t like that you have to Apple? Tell your customer to use a web browser. But I feel there is almost no respect from developers to what the users have chosen and why.

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This is actually wild to me because I think it is based on a big assumption.

I'm not actually sure most customers actually "chose" the iPhone. For many, it's a social construct. Apple creates iMessage, if you want to be able to talk to your friends and be in the group chat or get Facetime calls, you need an iPhone. The Social fallout is large. I wouldn't fully disagree with you if..we were talking about buying a random brand Android phone because you could just buy a different one..but Apple's unwillingness to openness really removes elements of choice.

Then there's this other angle that I think it is weird that you think it needs to be black or white. The default App store will still be the default. You can just use it out of the box as you do. Any solution that allows third party stores would be a setting that would need activation and would probably say, repeatedly "Don't do this if someone told you to".

Then finally, the angle that developers want things for free is wiiiild. Apple actively locks features out of PWAs on purpose, the native feature support is awful. Apple stating that any digital transaction on a phone means they get 30% is a wild world. Imagine a world where Ford cars demand 30% of all tolls or 30% of all drive-thru transactions as it is 'in-car' purchases. Computers never worked like this and it harms users. If apple wants a cut, they should have to defend it with a better product rather than locking people out.

Look I completely agree on the charges. There is no rationale for them. But fix that. The only viable defense is Apple creates an ecosystem and builds the APIs and OS. They need to get paid for the work - otherwise the argument for developers wanting stuff for free is still valid.

Enforce features being available (NFC for example on the iPhone). PWA is a complete joke - I agree. Enforce feature-parity.

But IMO the argument always boils down to the fact the fees are too high. That is the main driver. And like nobody talks about the fact they are the same as Xbox, PS, Nintendo, Steam because we have more mobile developers who want to make more money. I mean the vast majority of apps should most likely not exist - they are just bloatware (again IMO).

What I think would make sense we do a blanket statement for all stores and devices. Either all or nothing otherwise this is not really a problem on ethics or morality but on just pure profits.

You bring up a great point about XBox PS, and Nintendo. Nobody is forcing them to allow alternative game stores on their platforms. If anything there is less competition on game consoles due to all of the platform exclusives.

Nobody cares what color their iMessage chat bubbles are. It’s complete nonsense. We have a group text chat at work, other than a little friendly gentle ribbing about people owning the wrong phone (much like following the wrong sports team), it never even gets mentioned. My kids are the same way, they have group chats with their friend groups and the ones that speak in green bubbles are not ostracized because of it.

I just recently switched to an iPhone (not quite 2 years ago) after owning Android phones for years. iMessage wasn’t even a thought in my purchasing decision. It’s a great messaging app, but at the end of the day, it’s just a way to send text messages.

To be clear: nobody else should have the option to not have to use the walled garden on devices they purchased because... you prefer the walled garden?

If there is side loading forced to be allowed on Apple devices, there is nobody making you leave the walled garden.

No, there are already devices which are not wall gardened. Use those.

My argument is that I have bought a specific device (and everyone else also did) instead of the other device being open. So I have already made a choice. Now you (or someone else) comes in and says: Well all of you obviously want this freedom that you chose not to have in the first place…

Yeah I explicitly chose that and I know many people who made that choice. Because they want the piece of mind vs the sideloading. Again are there phones that allow it? Yes, and people have decided not to buy those. My point is - respect that choice and don’t tell ppl (general public) that they want something because it’s more profitable to the developers.

I do expect a future conversation to go like this:

Scammer: Madam, go into your settings and enable side loading. It will then connect to your bank account and I will…

Now click on the link I sent you to connect so I can help you

Malware installed…

What harm is there to you if sideloading is enabled?

Literally the new attack vector I described above. It’s one more thing to worry about.

I think your proposed attack vector would look more like this:

Scammer: Madam, go into your settings and enable side loading. It will then connect to your bank account and I will…

Madam: Okay uuuuh... A big popup came up... It says... That I should not enable this setting unless I really know what I'm doing... And if someone is telling me to enable it then I should hang up the phone!!

This is a totally unrealistic scenario. Victims of scam trust the person on the phone much more than their own ability to figure out what's going on. Scammers successfully convince people to manually disable every protection and dismiss every warning the computer throws at them regularly.

No amount of software red tape is going to prevent scammers from sideloading malware on a device of a victim who trusts them. The only realistic way to actually prevent it is to not have sideloading as an option in the first place.

Devil’s advocate here. Nobody else should have the option to prefer Apple devices as they are today because… you’d prefer them differently?

If Apple stays the same as it is today, there is nobody making you buy an Apple device.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to be able to sideload apps, and I think more competition in the App Store space would be beneficial for consumers. But a lot of the “freedom” type advocates act as if someone held a gun to their head and forced them to use an Apple device for the remainder of their life, and now they can’t sideload apps. If that’s an important feature to someone, there’s a platform that allows that.

You make a valid devil's advocate position!

Personally, its about pushing back on the ever increasing tide of not owning your own device, and using it as you see fit.

I just can't understand why so many are against a feature that they don't have to use.

I don't get it either. People come to Hacker News to defend the antithesis of everything hacking stands for. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Not really. I have been on HN for some time. I like the debates that happen here. This is probably one of the only topics I feel very strongly about.

Again nobody has managed to challenge my point that if you want side loading there is another platform you can use. Why does every platform needs to be so open? You wanna tell me there are NO benefits from a closed platform?

I can still side load using my Dev Account so I want a specific app - I’ll build it and have it. Anyone can side load with a dev account so the entire point as I keep coming back is because of the revenue to developers not freedoms.

> if you want side loading there is another platform you can use

I don't want another platform. I like Apple's hardware. I think it's really well made and would like to purchase it instead of Samsung phones.

That's all the justification necessary.

> You wanna tell me there are NO benefits from a closed platform?

I wanna tell you that none of these benefits matter if they come at the cost of computer freedom.

Every feature, even the one you don't use, comes with a price. There's no such thing as free feature in software.

Adding sideloading reduces security of a device even if you personally never touch it. There'll be more attack vectors, scams etc that would only be possible with sideloading.

In many ways this is the same choice of wanting to live and do business in countries with a strong rule of law. I don't want other people to be able to opt-out of the law when they think it suits them, I want good ground rules that make things better.

Apple's walled garden has created an Apps market in the same way that governments create markets in the economy: by creating basic rules of conduct and commerce that allow people to feel safe enough to transact.

If side-loading appears I expect a race to the bottom as apps attempt to move people out of the App store and into a progressive web of predatory dark patterns that eventually kills all trust in the platform.

> If side-loading appears I expect a race to the bottom as apps attempt to move people out of the App store and into a progressive web of predatory dark patterns that eventually kills all trust in the platform.

Surely Android is an absolute cesspit at this point then.

I think you over estimate how many people actually utilize side-loading. To your other points, an overwhelming majority will never turn on side-loading if it's added. They will continue to use Apple's walled garden app market. The barriers to even install a side-loaded app will cause most to give up in frustration.

> Surely Android is an absolute cesspit at this point then.

I mean... yes? Like, it's not the bad old days of Windows in the early 2000s, but people demonstrably don't want to spend money in the Play Store and what money they do spend is on big name brands.

> Accept it. You don’t like that you have to Apple? Tell your customer to use a web browser

That's exactly like I've done, I do tell people that iphones are legacy devices and to buy something else in the future if they want a better experience, I won't port anything on it and discontinued everything I had the appstore.

I'm not sure that answer would make you happy either though.

It actually does!! I’m very happy to use web apps.

As for legacy - pretty sure the markets, users and developers will disagree with you

Plus my experience on Android has been terrible. BUT some ppl like it. I don’t go and shit on them and tell them it’s terrible. I write my apps to support Android as much as possible. If there are issues I’d prioritise iOS but that’s because it’s my platform of choice. The same way you have the right. AND that is fine

> As for legacy - pretty sure the markets, users and developers will disagree with you

That's fine then, everyone has their point of view. I've used their platform to deploy the app before I discontinued it to make it Android-only so I do have a real experience on how bad the dev platform is, I'm not just judging randomly.

I also used the phone itself for a year and it was hands down the worst mobile experience I ever had but this is more subjective, unlike the dev experience which I do think is objectively terrible.

It's not just developers who want this; I'm a user who owns and iPhone and I would like to be able to sideload or use other stores/payment systems.

I don't want to use a web browser for anything I'd use an app for. The web is and always will be an inferior experience compared to a well-made native app.

I don't want to use Android. Google's Android is so full of privacy holes that nobody really knows how to turn most of the data collection off. Open-source Android is incompatible with standard apps like my local public transit app due to over-reliance on Play Services.

I do like the things you mentioned about Apple but just as I'll use raw credit cards or bank transfers with merchants I trust and PayPal for those I don't, I'd like to do the same with purchases on iOS. Sometimes I'd be happy to pay a premium to know I won't have to go through an arduous process to cancel a subscription, sometimes I wouldn't. I want the choice.

> I'm a user who owns and iPhone and I would like to be able to sideload or use other stores/payment systems.

> I don't want to use Android. Google's Android is so full of privacy holes that nobody really knows how to turn most of the data collection off.

It's pretty amusing that you don't see or pretend to not see the connection between the two.

I don't think tracking by the OS itself has anything to do with side-loading.

> I prefer the Apple experience

So don't download apps from elsewhere? If an app decides to move away from the App Store there will be competitors jumping in to replace it within days.

>> You don’t like that you have to Apple? Tell your customer to use a web browser.

It's not working like that with companies with values of trillions that own half of the market.

>I prefer the Apple experience.

Yup, different people place the freedom vs security cursor at different spots.

You're clearly a "I'd rather live in a golden cage than use my brain" type, and that is fine, more power to you.

No everyone is like you, thank god.

No, I value my time and my brain. It takes me X wasted minutes to talk to a support person to remove my subscription. That’s not really a good use of my brain, is it now?

If you want the freedom - there are platforms out there. Use those. There is no reason to impose your views on the rest of us. I prefer this level of security vs freedom. When I need the freedom I pickup my Android phone.

The important point here is I have a choice.

Ppl get scammed by phone calls & text messages… it’s an entire industry designed and operating to bypass this brain of yours. And now we are introducing another vector to make it easier. That is my problem with side-loading. The fact that it increases the attack surface for everyone even though not everyone wants it.

> You're clearly a "I'd rather live in a golden cage than use my brain" type

You're posting this on Hacker News, literally 9 people out of 10 here use their brains for a living. I hope you're keeping that in mind.

Yeah, he's posting this on Hacker News. A site whose very name is pretty much the antithesis of what these corporations are doing.

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