Apple redecorates its iPhone prison to appease Europe
theregister.com
theregister.com
There we go.
All of the whining about how much more secure things are with a forced walled garden all assume that Apple's intention is to serve the user with these limitations.
It's not.
Clinging to this idea with all of the evidence laid bare as it is today, is the epitome of cope.
P.S.: Also, arguments like "Yes, but, making all of this money this way is why they're able to make the best phone" is literally just another "the ends justify the means" defense. It's probably not true, but if it was, that wouldn't necessarily justify what they did to get there.
> As Apple has notched the most successful sales of Mac computers in history, its head of software engineering, Craig Federighi, says attacks have risen as well. "Today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we don't find acceptable,"
> Each week, Apple identifies a couple pieces of malware on its own or with help of third parties, Federighi added, and it uses built-in systems to automatically remove them from customers' computers. But still, the malware can infect hundreds of thousands of computers before Apple stamps it out. Since last May, Federighi said, there have been 130 types of Mac malware, and one of them alone infected 300,000 systems.
> Federighi said he believes Macs are still more secure than PCs, but he made clear that the Mac's facing a "significantly larger malware problem" than are iPhones , iPads and Apple's other devices. "It's an endless game of whack-a-mole."
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/apple-cites-significant-ma...
But freedom vs security is a balancing act in literally every system. Not just iPhones, and not just computers. Not acknowledging the importance of the "freedom" aspect of things, not just as a matter of allowing end users to utilize their computers as they please, but also as a matter of fairness for the digital transactions that happen on them, allows Apple to defend their practices and especially, their extremely lucrative monopoly over monetary transactions on their platform. Note that Apple's solution on macOS has been not just to shrug and block off the ability to run arbitrary code (though they certainly have discouraged it a lot), they have actually also made genuine improvements to the security story on macOS. While we're at it, they also have been doing the same on iOS this entire time, because iPhone and iPad are also not free of malware either. (Would have been nice if they shared the numbers, but it seems like "significantly less" is the best we're going to get.)
This is exactly why I think it's really important to pay attention to the way they are treating government regulation to see what their true intent is.
Obviously, Apple cares about malware in part because it can be damaging to their brand, so there need be no altruism involved in their desire to defeat malware. But also, modifying their operating system for the Chinese market to phone home inside of Safari and add tracing to Airdrop are things that they seem all too happy to do, and those things are not only not helpful to their users, but actively harmful. Apple is happy to do it because like many companies, they deeply desire access to the very large and increasingly lucrative Chinese market.
This is a great demonstration that apparently needs to be made that your best interests are not Apple's primary concerns when making product decisions. The incentives can line up sometimes, but it's a hell of a lot more likely that the incentive that is lining up here is actually an 80+ billion dollar per year market that they don't want to lose a red cent of. This is some pretty basic Occam's razor, but all of this non-sense about how scary the security of allowing people to install software packages is has clouded things up severely.
Note that nobody has actually asked for sideloading outside of any sort of app store to be particularly easy or simple, as far as I am aware. It just needs to be possible, and not just "pay $99/year, install XCode, sign your apps and load them temporarily"-type non-sense.
But for those that want, just allow reinstalling iOS (a full installation, deleting existing data) with the flag enabled. And just like that you can do whatever you want with your device, and "accepting the risks" of doing so.
What if your grandpa is tricked into enabling it? Well, all the data will be deleted so there will be nothing to steal.
Bought a used iPhone with the flag but still want the "security"? Just reinstall without it and done.
Apple could:
hide a default off "install third party apps from safari" flag somewhere deep in the settings
make it so you can only install 3rd party apps from the web using a special browser that doesn't come pre-installed, like in Fire TV OS
have a "never allow third party installs" flag that can only be set when initialising the device (or in the BIOS that iOS devices don't have but should). if the user wants a walled garden, they can choose it for themselves
these are simple options I thought of in 5 minutes that would likely solve 99% of cases, or at the very least absolve Apple of responsibility for them
the world's richest and probably most capable tech company could permanently solve this problem with all the resources in their metaphorical left thumbnail, if they wanted to, but they don't want to, because this argument is an excuse for maintaining their market dominance, not a genuine concern
> Windows 11 in S mode is a version of Windows 11 that's streamlined for security and performance, while providing a familiar Windows experience. To increase security, it allows only apps from Microsoft Store, and requires Microsoft Edge for safe browsing.
Are you telling me that MacOS is insecure system?
They could allow a different store like F-Droid on Android. Nobody would force your elder parents to install that one.
For every other app on the "original store", charge a one time fee for checking the security and be done with it.
Implying that being open = being attacked is fearmongering.
Plus, I don't think the majority of iPhone customers are asking for openness.
the majority of chickens aren't asking to live free in the fields
Let’s say you take your app down, but someone uploads it to other app stores.
How are users given an easy way to avoid getting charged for future installs if they decide they want to stop shipping their product?
Then it would be your Apple Developer Account signing it right?
I know hundreds of people who have iPhones and iPads. None have ever told me they fell imprisonned by their iPhone.
Bad faith arguments never end. You don't like us dumping toxic waste in your rivers? That's easy, just move to a different town!
This technology is too entrenched in our daily lives and Apple is too dominant for any business to be able to ignore their users, which is roughly half of the western population.
Apple is however free to leave the EU if it deems these rules to be unreasonable.
Lots more discussion here: