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Comment by gigatexal | Hacker News Reader

I’m going to get pilloried for this but I like the rather draconian heavy handed way Apple keeps iOS locked down. It’s an appliance. I can trust it.

If or when it gets opened up I’ll still stick to all the Apple or first party stores and things.

That the iPhone is locked down and android is open is a feature and difference that consumers choose I think.

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I dont agree with it at all, but you are right, people buy apple because need to trust somebody and they trust apple to keep making the right product for them. I don't even consider them superior but certainly trustworthy.

Whatever changes apple implements would have to be easily revertable so people can go back to their golden prison.

It’s not a prison to keep me in. It’s a wall to keep bad things out.

And so is my apartment door. But I can open the door whenever I want and its not up to my landlord to decide which guests I invite.

Except that it is certainly up to everything you consume to demand that you install their app through their shitty third party store.

Imagine if your appliance manufacturer could dictate that you kept your door open for them.

So why do you think this hasn't happened in android yet?

Epic tried. So it has already happened.

Epic failed.

so close

Monitoring surveillance-style software is already commonplace, just not on iOS.

For example Bossware has been common since covid and it's not a stretch to imagine a future where health and other types of insurers use similar software to ensure that you're not partaking in risk. Consumers need more than every developer to act in good faith.

Example data collected by bossware surveillance applications include: keylogging, email monitoring, productivity tracking, screen recording, audio recording, camera recording, presence detectors, social media monitoring, time tracking, web browsing activity, location tracking, file search etc

Such apps would never receive approval from the app store, nor would they receive the necessary permissions to even ask for such invasive access.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/27/remote-wo...

This is what laws, citizens rights and unions are for. You should not need to submit to a feudal lord such as apple in order to enjoy protection from such inhuman practices.

Only one of these approaches is working. So maybe it's a good thing to not eliminate the ability to choose

This reads like a modern retelling of the Stockholm syndrome and I cringe at this prevalent attitude on HN.

If you do not have choice on the platform, you are in a prison. That is why it's called jailbreaking.

Are you or folks that take this same tact marching on Microsoft and Sony with pitchforks to open up the OS and hardware for Xbox and PlayStation?

How would that be a bad thing? All that would mean is users get the best of both worlds, so yes please.

be it a good or bad thing aside it's not being clamored for yet Apple is being forced to because they're the largest company in the world. it's a double standard in thinking really and i just think folks should be consistent.

i have an xbox one x, it does what it was designed to do and it does it well. I have a desktop computer i built. it was designed to run anything that runs on x86 and designed to be open. so i run linux. i love it. i just figure i use the tools as they were meant to be used.

i am a bit inconsistent though ... i do support the asahi folks in their attempts at getting linux supported on m1 hardware. but they're not bemoaning apple's closed attitude to other operating systems on apple silicon they're taking more of the jailbreaker's approach of hacking their way in. more power to them. that's the rub i think. folks trying to use the courts or mobs to force the hand of a company to do a thing for hardware that was designed to be closed in the first place.

A phone is not a game console, and the opening of the hardware would be good either way.

You do have a choice. Buy an Android phone.

And if I want the better UI that comes with Apple, why should your stockholm-syndrome keep me in prison with it?

You want the Apple magic? You've got to drink the entire potion. It's all of a piece.

Build it in Android then?

I don't understand this 'I want what they have but I want them to change it for meeee' mindset. Everyone complaining appears to be a power user/hacker. Do it yourself then.

And I want a Siemens oven with a Bosch interface: some things you either make yourself or they are just not in the market.

If you want a fully customizable phone: build your own on Linux

Then buy the phone and accept the fact that life is full of hard choices. In a world filled with actual, important problems that need solving, I utterly fail to see why we should go whining to the government to intervene. The level of infantilism that surfaces whenever this topic comes up on HN astounds me.

So you can still stay behind the wall if you want while others can break from the prison))) that's the point

A wall is a contraption that you can take down if you fancy. A prison is not

I just don't really understand how allowing side loading on the platform will "fix" anything for consumers. The thinking seems entirely shallow, there isn't even any consideration for how these 3rd party stores will handle permission bits to protect the user's data.

It just seems something that would be really good for large companies like Spotify, and suck for small developers who will still need to rely on the App Store (and its commission) for visibility.

If the EU is so interested in which apps are available on iOS and eliminating any discriminatory practices, then the EU should legislate that the App Store approval process be made independent, heck the EU can run it themselves for the EU-states.

> The thinking seems entirely shallow, there isn't even any consideration for how these 3rd party stores will handle permission bits to protect the user's data.

this is a feature for the companies pushing for it - this is literally the entire point, in fact! facebook wants to be able to use sideloading to push this stuff again:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...

for the consumers pushing for it, I think there's a pretty good mixture of rationales: some of it is good-faith belief that everything should be open (although you can see from the defense around consoles that many people do not fall into this camp). some of it is just ignorance or not thinking it through. and some of it is brand-warriorism/fanboyism, the people who want to legislate a solution to the android/iphone wars, or simply are doing it because they know it's something apple users care about and that burning it down will make them upset.

the usual human mixture of reasons, basically. but for companies? yeah, they fucking know it's gonna undercut the permissioning system, that's the whole fucking point. because right now they have apple standing in the way doing app review. they can't overturn apple, they have to go around them, but apple is the gatekeeper on their platform. or, was.

companies know there's fanboyism they can exploit to their own goals, and is perfectly happy to use these, ahem, "temporary allies". Just like the google "pwease use RCS, it's so open!" page that gets passed around uncritically, completely omitting the fact that google isn't using RCS, it's using a proprietary fork of RCS and it's already blocking third-party interop from interested parties.

https://ianbetteridge.com/2022/08/19/please-wont-someone-sto...

(If that's open then macos is open because it's based on freeBSD, right?)

We keep seeing more and more evidence that even large "trusted" developers and publishers are trying to exploit this market. We saw it with both Meta and Google in the certificates fiasco you linked, but also even in small ways like how news and games publishers aim to improperly charge customers: New York Times and Epic.

Even looking at Spotify, they never once passed on the 15% fee savings that apply after a one-year subscription. Yet they constantly decry these fees as a reason they can't lower prices – and now Spotify is 100% a reader app, and they still can't turn a profit.

Meanwhile at the same time, what have we seen:

1. Apple reduce fees. New developers and developers who receive less than $1M per year are at a 15% rate. Subscriptions that run over a year are also halved to the 15% rate.

2. Apple providing developers more opportunities to challenge rejections.

3. Apple providing developers even the opportunity to challenge the rules themselves.

4. Report after report (E.g. Nokia's annual Threat Intelligence Report) pointing the prevalence of Malware not on security holes, but on side-loading.(1)

More simply if we want to play Occam's razor with this and say it's all about the money: Then Apple's interests lay in protecting and enhancing their platforms because their lion's share of profit comes from device sales, they could reduce app store fees to 0% and while that wouldn't be fair (and likely anti-competitive) it wouldn't destroy Apple's business. While for the majority of the other players have profits come, almost solely, from ads/user data. To such an extent that limiting the flow of this data has had significant effects on their company revenue.

(1) https://www.nokia.com/networks/security-portfolio/threat-int... (see pages 13 and 15 for more detail.)

So you say iphone can offer alternate stores/sideload and still keep old behavior for users that want to stay in apple's ecosystem? So why lock down iphone then? Consumers that want it locked down, will keep their old routines...

If governments force Apple's hand so be it what can Apple do then, but if I could help it, I'd not want it to be opened up for 3rd parties.

why? id doesn't affect your freedom to use only appstore

Because it opens the possibility for folks to get duped into installing something from a different app store that could lead to all sorts of problems. I am thinking about less sophisticated users like my boomer mom and aunts and uncles who if you're a nerd like me you're often the relied upon first line of tech support.

for them you can implement parental control if that's so important, or aple could just put a ton of warnings and dangers with big red cancel button and gray 'I want to continue button' with some additional warnings. In my experience, the second they see this messages, they'll exit the process

The coercion is the problem. You are free to buy any phone you want, but want to coerce other men into doing what you want. It’s immoral.

i'm not forcing you to sideload. It's immoral to not own your device fully, not being able to install what you want, even if it can hurt you if you don't have the skills is also immoral

@a-user-you-like yes, it's immoral, you guessed it right, just like many other things in this world but are still happening and I hold the same opinion with other systems, be that smartwatches, infotainmens car systems or any other stuff. I don't expect sideload/firmware replace to be safe/easy, but I expect to be able to do this on things I own

No, as alternate stores will change the experience for everybody.

I download 0 new apps per year, but I use WhatsApp, Outlook, and Google Maps. Today, I get them all from one store - one password to remember, one credit card to have, one stupid set of "security questions" to forget the answers.

Tomorrow, Facebook AppStore will be the only place to get WhatsApp, Microsoft AppStore will be the only place to get Outlook, and Google AppStore will be the only place to get Google Maps, so I will need to download n app stores to get to where I am today. Create n accounts... accept n privacy policies... activate two-factor n times...

Yeah, no, thank you but no. I'm pretty happy with the AppStore as it is, thank you very much.

Given that this scenario hasn't happened with Android, which allows sideloading, this argument seems like baseless fearmongering to me.

Play store allows basically anything (including obviously fake/scam/adware/spyware apps), there's nothing to be gained by doing this on Android, you'd lose an easy distribution mechanism that doesn't limit you, helps you gain victims and provides credibility - it's on top of Google then it must be good, right?

Also consider the market share of iOS and Android. Why bother for such small amount of price sensitive users?

iOS is another story entirely. The App Store has a lot of demands on the app developers wrt. UX, compatibility, etc; there's a lot of money to be saved (and faster time to market gained) by not publishing apps there. And then you can also bypass the security/privacy screening.

so you say there are no scam apps on appstore? Asking bc I've read a lot of articles abt scammy aps there and apple is doing nothing to kill these

Given that this scenario has happened on the PC side of things, where I now need to have a Steam store, Epic store, EA Store, Ubi store, and GOG store (it's optional — thanks GOG!), I'd say it's not as baseless.

And that's a good thing. Do you think the situation on Windows would be improved if Microsoft forced everyone to use their store?

There is competition amongst stores and people outright reject software that is exclusive to a store that they do not favor.

> people outright reject software that is exclusive to a store that they do not favor

That's a funny thing to tell to your kid that he's now an outcast in his school because everyone plays that Battlefield game — but his dad "does not favor" EA.

Drop the “app” from store for a second and make your argument again, except imagine a scenario where there is just one physical store for all the consumer goods you need, and you’d be upset about that being broken up because now you’ll be inconvenienced.

But what you won’t be is under the thumb of a single company that has way too much power over you.

I like the experience more than the alternatives, so I'm not ready to switch it for what is for me a worse experience. You probably won't be able to convince me otherwise.

Imagine a scenario where there is a store that requires strict controls on ingredients and supply chain, where if you want your crackers or frozen pizzas or fruit sold there, you have to ensure they are USDA organic, free of GMOs, pesticides, and so on.

But I like Cheez-its, and Cheez-its are NOT USDA organic and the supply chain is full of modern monoculture farmed grain and its full of artificial ingredients. The store refuses to carry it. It's not nice! I like those, why can't I buy them there?

Even if it was the only store in town, and if I live in Anytown I have to shop at the fancy-pants health store, I chose to live in Anytown. I can leave anytime I want. But wait! There are parts of Anytown I really like! It's walkable, and quiet, and safe. I just can't have Cheez-its. It's not nice to make me choose between all of the things I like, and the things I don't! I want to have my cake and eat it to, or, rather, in this case, my Cheez-its.

If Anytown was some small town whose economy can only support one store, sure. But I think in this scenario Anytown is more like NYC. One store is not enough, and saying “if you don’t like it, move” is not really appealing. I’m not going to move, I’m going to get my fellow citizens together and break the damn store up.

I severely doubt that big corps will force side loading their app in iPhone when the easier experience is the iOS AppStore. Same reason why all those apps you mentioned are in the android store and not just apk downloads from their site.

We don't know how this will play out, and probably instead of sideloading the new stores will be downloaded from the app store.

So say you want WhatsApp on your phone.

Today: AppStore - get WhatsApp.

Tomorrow: AppStore - get Facebook store - start Facebook store - get WhatsApp.

The power Facebook (also, Microsoft and Google) have over the users of their apps may be so great that they could pull it.

Small companies? No chance in hell.

So actually, this move might put Apple (and Apple users) into a weaker situation while empowering FB/MS/GOOG and having no effect whatsoever on small app developers.

But apple can ban other stores in it's store. They can say 'we made platform open to sideloading, you can even sideload other stores' in combo with several warnings that sideloading is dangerous when a user attempts to do it. This can guarantee that apps will stay inside appstore bc it will be too hard for users otherwise

Indeed, if you don't like it you can buy another product. That should be Apple's choice.

Sure, users will likely benefit from this but I don't see why the EU needs to regulate this.

Ppl like good hardware and sw support but want more freedom, why not allow this? I hope for a similar law for other systems like smartwatches, infotainment systems, etc

People get good hardware and sw support thanks to the reduced "freedom".

Wut? Proofs? Mac m1 has both and more freedom

Mac m1 exists thanks to iPhone profits.

You know the implementation, if any, is going tobe optional for end users right? You dont have to install anything you dont want to.

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