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Comment by truculent | Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting to know if there were ways regulation could promote new competitor businesses, instead of handicapping Apple.

It seems to me that in a healthier marketplace, Apple could argue that consumers were choosing them because their practices result in a better product. But in a duopoly (as with smartphone OSes), the argument rings hollow.

It will be interesting to see where the courts rule, and where we decide the line between integration-for-better-UX and monopoly-enforcement is. I do wonder if that line would appear different if there were more competitors, and if there are additional, or creative ways that new competitors could be promoted.

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Demanding sideloading is not handicapping in any measure. It is about removing a harmful and arbitrary restriction that Apple imposes on its users. It should not be up to Apple to decide which apps a user can run on their own device.

(And don't even get me started on how Apple readily removes access to apps after demands from Putin's Government.)

Yes, that change I wouldn’t call handicapping; although I’m sure Apple would.

On the other hand, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that greater interoperability could result in some features being degraded or unavailable (maybe certain things happen slower, or consume more battery life, for example). We might still decide this is worth it overall, but it could genuinely handicap the UX.

Really? Can you give an example? I don't see why performance or battery life would need to be impacted for users of the default services. In other words, if you want to keep using Apple-only stuff, you would get the same outcome as today.

On the one hand, as a developer, I agree with you.

On the other hand, as a user, and one who has to do de facto IT support for my family, I strongly disagree. Having an off-store method of installing apps is just dangerous. You could argue that it's a question of Apple having an incomplete security model, in which they enforce through human review that apps do not perform malicious behavior. But Apple is just pretty good at this -- the rare app that slips through their net is usually quickly caught and killed, and their security on-first-use opt-ins "Allow this app to access your camera", along with enforcing that apps for whom the permission is denied must still function, is critical, compared to the Android "Allow this app to access all device state forever including private information and your entire DNA sequence" that you get on app install.

On the gripping hand, advanced users, like developers, can basically sideload whatever the hell they want. The barrier here is a lot stronger than a checkbox in settings saying "allow sideloading apps" and thus is intrisically more difficult to access, and then only by people who know what they're doing anyway.

> Having an off-store method of installing apps is just dangerous.

I can't help but find this to be extremely infantilizing. The whole point of a democratic society is that we believe that we can educate people rather than relying on some authoritarian dictator to decide the limits of our freedoms. What you appear to be suggesting that your family is too stupid to be educated? Are you sure about that?

I think my reply to the sibling comment covers most of this.

But I am not suggesting that my family is too stupid -- rather, that the level of expertise required to safely determine whether a given app is safe to sideload is not only beyond the reach of a casual user, it's beyond the reach even of an experienced expert. Is my family too stupid to understand quantum field theory? I don't know -- maybe? Does the framing of "too stupid" make sense with that question?

Should you also allowlist their internet use, then?

What's the "sharp edge of the knife" here? For use of web sites, the assumption has been that the user agent is responsible for preventing websites, no matter how malicious, from performing harmful operations. Even before there was a formal concept of "sandboxing" this was the basic assumption, and the biggest violation of it always came from "hey, download this executable and run it on your machine".

Maybe someday we'll have sufficient app isolation that there will be no worries about the idea of running completely untrusted native-code apps on your device. But this is not that day.

It looks like the off-store app installation method that Apple is developing has exactly the same system protections as App Store apps, including the capability to kill malicious apps. Just as with websites, I think the biggest threat would be deceit: phishing, credit card and identity theft, subscription schemes, etc.

An argument to danger also works for banning kitchen knives. That something is dangerous is only an argument against it if the danger outweighs the usefulness. Given Apple’s restrictive App Store policies, sideloading on iOS would be very useful indeed, more useful than on Android.

To sideload on iOS via the developer tools you need a Mac, and the builds will expire. So it’s not a viable alternative to sideloading due to the cost and inconvenience.

The comparison to knives, whose function and danger is completely obvious by inspection, is not really apt. Compare it to a home furnace or water boiler instead. These are regulated, both from the state and from independent testing labs. You can make and install your own if you know what you're doing, but no reputable installer or contractor will even consider installing some jury-rigged non-compliant contraption.

A checkbox that says "I understand the risks involved" is never going to cut it, because there is 1) no way that the overwhelming majority of users understand the risk, and 2) the existence of the option puts us in a world where completely naive users are told "to install the cat-picture-a-day app, first click the 'allow sideloading' button and ignore the warnings, and then go to cat-picture-a-day.ru and install!"

As the article notes, we saw this with malware and browser toolbars in the 90s, and we see it now with misbehaving sideloaded Android apps (and "repurposed" Android apps). I personally am happy to pay the premium to get a quality device that forces developers into a constrained environment for my benefit.

>I personally am happy to pay the premium to get a quality device that forces developers into a constrained environment for my benefit.

I too like the walled garden. I don't really see that as an argument against sideloading however. Presumably the first-party app store would continue to operate with the same restrictions and I'd happily avoid opting-in to sideloading.

The people who want it are happy and I'm no worse off.

The problem is that if the sideloading avenue exists, what do you do when your bank says "from now on use our sideloaded app instead of the app store version"? Or when whatsapp (or telegram, or whatever) does this.

The App Store is a forcing function for app developers, because it's the only way to reach IOS customers. Without that forcing function, some app developers will circumvent, and if a critical mass does it, then you no longer have the option of opting out.

Apple can presumably make the warnings scary enough to make app developers reluctant to leave, but alternative less restrictive app stores and big-name developers will lobby to have those warnings removed for being deceptive.

And what do you do when your bank says "Apple no longer allows us to put our app on the Appstore"? This is not a hypothetical question but an issue millions of users are dealing with every day.

Apple should not have that kind of power over owners of the devices Apple manufactures.

That’s an interesting point.

If some game announced you could only get it through an alternative app store, I wouldn’t play that game.

Banking is critical functionality on the other hand. Under those circumstances, I’d change banks. The likelihood of any major bank attempting that seems awfully low and I’m sure it’d attract the widespread condemnation it deserves.

Android has sideloading. I don’t doubt some apps try to push users to an alternative marketplace but important everyday apps are where you’d expect them to be.

Then… don’t? The regulations are not about killing the App Store. It will still be possible to use the App Store while sideloading is a thing. See google play.

People who are happy with Apple's policies should be able to enjoy them and stay perfectly safe from malware and scam apps (sarcasm). Nobody is forcing them to install a third-party app.

Others should be able to use their devices as they please.

Also, the argument that 'you knew what kind of device you were buying' doesn't work, because Apple has shown time and again that whatever app is available at the moment of the purchase of the app can be later removed from Appstore by Apple for whatever reasons.

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