It blows my mind that Apple can tell you how you're allowed to copy your plain text files from one of your computers to another one of your computers. If you look at the behavior sans the branding, it would not be hard to label it malware.
i sync files with dropbox to my ios devices all the time.
Apple arbitrarily restricts you from using your applications (obsidian) to read and write your data in a way that you can sync, to no fault of its own, your own, or the syncing service.
I strongly encourage you to try associating this kind of behavior with an unfamiliar organization as a mental exercise. How would you feel about that? Someone else restricting your access to your computer such that you cannot use your applications how you want, through no technical fault of their own? I bet that would see that as a problem you would want to fix right away.
Even though my phone and my tablet is capable of being a general purpose device, it was not the reason I bought them. They have a specific purpose and they are filling it well. I wouldn’t buy a microwave and complain I can’t make cakes with it.
Obsidian's sync service for example has dark patterns and is a lot closer to your definition of malware as they are hiding how their sync works (versioning, bugs they know but don't advertise, merge conflicts that destroys data etc).
> I bet that would see that as a problem you would want to fix right away.
No. But I also don't know what "fix" means in this context? Not use Obsidian? As using Android is not an option.
A lot of developers were just crushed by that. Imagine having hundreds of thousands of dollars into developing an app when Apple just destroys the ability to do it.
When a big corporation has monopoly power (and Apple is very close to that - only one equally evil competitor in mobile space), they do bad things, often thinking they are doing good.
[caveat - there is so far an unofficial way to get around their "we will blow away your saved browser data" that was discussed by one of the webkit developers on the webkit blog. But since it isn't an official Apple doc - do we trust it?]
I was one developer who was burned. I was developing, as a volunteer, a web app for a very large volunteer organization. Boom... now it may not be possible, or if I use the work-around, it may be possible until it suddenly changes.