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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

> Apple is probably going to have to light a gigantic stack of cash on fire to try to course correct this. Or they’ll cut their losses and write it off entirely

Much cheaper: ship a bug that allows OS jailbreak to run VMs. See what unshackled creators develop. Add official interfaces to support those use cases. Rinse & repeat.

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As someone who spent a lot of time tinkering with jailbroken iPhones back in the day, there was always an ongoing rumor in the jailbreak community (maybe better to call it a myth or legend) that Apple knowingly let jailbreak vulnerabilities out. Apple probably could benefit massively from letting enthusiast users tinker with the OS in a way that gives Apple a bit of plausible deniability.

With modern security measures that’s definitely a thing of the past. If Apple intentionally adds bugs it will be mostly used to make spyware so they can’t do that anymore

checkm8 exists for iDevices with unpatchable boot hardware flaw.

There is also TrollStore -- two days ago, https://x.com/fce365/status/1810761291306323997

  iOS 17.0 TrollStore INSTALL METHOD Finally Achieved!

17.0 is a year old lmao

> 17.0 is a year old

It's the current iOS major version and apps will support this version for years to come.

Those who saved blobs with https://github.com/airsquared/blobsaver can freely switch between new and old iOS versions, e.g. if they have a use case which needs https://trollstore.org/:

  TrollStore is a tool that allows non-jailbroken iOS users to install and run IPA files without App Store verification. It works on iOS 15.5-16.6.1 and iOS 17.0, and supports automatic app refreshing and resigning.

So? You can buy an AppDB pro subscription or something similar for $20 a year to do the same thing on newer iOS versions with way less effort. Yes trollstore can do some other things but either way Apple did definitely not intentionally add the core trust but Trollstore uses and it’s more or less irrelevant now tbh

> buy an AppDB pro subscription

Seems legit, https://appdb.to/info/empire-strikes-back

> ship a bug that allows OS jailbreak to run VMs

Apple lacks that courage

To do it intentionally, sure, but don't worry, it'll happen whether they intend it or not.

I highly doubt.

They don't even allow emulators in iOS.

It took EU a decade to make Apple allow third party stores and even then Apple hasn't really complied still.

Same for browser engines.

M2 onwards has silicon support for nested virtualization. iOS 17 uses "Secure eXclaves" to isolate some code, which may be similar to the Android 14 pKVM use of nested virtualiation, https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/12/virtual-ma...

  With AVF virtual machines become a core construct of the Android operating system, similar to the way Android utilizes Linux processes. Developers have the flexibility to choose the level of isolation for a virtual machine:

  One-way isolation: Android (the host) can control and inspect the contents of the VM. These are most commonly used for sandboxing and separation..

  Two-way isolation (Isolated VM): Android (the host) and the virtual machine (the guest) are completely isolated from each other.. This has 2 main properties:

    1. The workload and data inside the VM is inaccessible (confidential) from the host (Android). 
    2. Even if Android is compromised all the way up to (and including) the host kernel, the isolated VM remains uncompromised.

This would never happen. Apple is terrified to the core (apologies) of breasts and panties and cursing and such. The thought of someone being caught doing those things means the chances of this happening is less than zero.

> ship a bug that allows OS jailbreak to run VMs

That's why I am always surprised when somebody calls it a devkit. It is just a coping mechanism for a failed product.

Furthermore if Apple wants to turn it into such devkits, why do such weird and unnecessary mating rituals? Just let anyone who has active developer license on Apple ID to modify Vision OS and see what they are going to come up with. Apple will then add it into Vision OS and ban people who come up with the solution at a first place. As it is done in AppStore today.

There's still the cost of hardware problem. With so few sales it's unlikely that even this functionality would tip the scale.

Yeah, there's a recurring meme that all VR/AR needs is some "killer app" to show up and suddenly break through to the mass market.

The device is simply far too expensive. No software is going to meaningfully change the value proposition relative to its competitors.

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