I am usually slow to upgrade but I jumped on this and iOS 18 immediately because of "iPhone Mirroring".
I've only had it for a few minutes, but it's really nice!
I've only had it for a few minutes, but it's really nice!
Does anyone understand why? Is it apple having a flap about recent DMA/Whatever regulations they don't like or is there an actual technical reason why what's probably a fancy version of VNC can't work without breaching European regulations?
While the DMA's changes to the app store received the most publicity, the DMA mandates for modularity for any feature where a home-advantage could be granted by the gate keeper. Since features like AI and screen mirroring are already established markets with competitors, Apple offering these as built in functions could be interpreted as actions against the DMA unless they offer a way for others to tap into it via APIs.
However this is just a guess. There is a cynical rhetoric that it's to punish the EU but this is a pretty flimsy idea since it's clear that Apple is relying on these new features to propel upgrades to M series macs and new iPhones. Currently there exists no tentpole feature for people in the EU to upgrade. The other reason is that it's pretty tenuous to think that the EU masses will rise up against the EC because they don't have screen mirroring or image playground.
I’m unsure whether the DMA compels them to provide specific APIs beyond the ability to connect to arbitrary devices and draw to the screen, and it’s maybe a little bit concerning if it does. My understanding was that nothing in the DMA specifically compelled Apple to create e.g. MarketplaceKit, it’s just that the alternative would be to open up iOS far more than Apple is willing to do.
I really don't see how it falls outside of the DMA.
Which is everything wrong about current Apple. How far the Apple has fallen off the tree. Back in the resurgence of the Mac after Steve Jobs returned, the policy was to make everything as open as possible, now it's entirely the reverse.
If the iPhone/Mac were a competitive product as they are, there would be no need to retort to that sort of shenanigan, the whole thing would be openly documented but implementation quality would be the deciding factor. It is not surprising that Apple doesn't want to compete because they wouldn't necessarily win, before even talking about price.
In any case, while it's a nice feature to have, it can only be considered worthwhile because all of Apple's strategies for convergence have failed pretty hard (after mocking Microsoft) and there are now too many annoying things you need to do specifically on a smartphone (because of Apps, Auths, or other nonsense of the sort).
If anything, it is extremely dumb (considering the price and marketing around ecosystem) that you cannot just use whatever data is on the phone but with correct desktop app implementation even (and especially) for Apple first party app.
As a Mac user that is getting old (I remember System 7 from my youth, and I used System 9 for a bit) I feel extremely saddened that we are now celebrating what is basically a custom implementation of VNC/Remote Desktop for a completely locked device/OS. This feature was considered essential/basic 20 years ago, having to use it to access a limited device because a company can't figure out proper convergence, largely out of pure greed, is really not something to be happy about.
I'm sure one day they'll figure out how to make a Mac App to properly exploit all the health/sport data of their very expensive Watch products (that require an iPhone for no good reason). But when this day will come I probably won't be a customer anymore so whatever...
My perception is quite different. One of the first things Steve did after his return was to revoke the licenses for Mac clones (Power Computing, Daystar, UMAX, etc). Also, the iPod, iPhone and iPad were created under his leadership and have always been very far from open in their designs, regarding both hardware and software.
Apple was (and still is) very open when it helps them, e.g. by adopting and enforcing USB (original iMac) or USB C (laptops from ca 2015 on).
Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk.
You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc.
And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing.
There isn't a government or advertising company on this planet that wouldn't want to get at this information.
> You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc.
> And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing.
MacOS is not secure in the way you would like to think it's secure. This is already risk. And Apple really could do this right: make screen mirroring use the DRM playback paths, and open up the API to trigger it to competitors (who would get precisely the same DRM-playback-pathed result of a screen mirror showing up in a window from which they cannot read). I don't really know why a competitor would want to compete here, but they could.
And there are also many third party apps that never made Mac versions.
So the amount of data we are talking about exposing is significantly higher.
And the issue is that the DMA is ambiguous about what competition and interoperability specifically means and so it would just take one company to complain about your solution for Apple to be fined 10% of global revenue.
This is again a misinformed take. Your Mac can already get all your iPhone's data from the cloud where it is synced without viable opt-out or compartmentalization.
Only if the data is available in iCloud and it is stored in files and it is not encrypted.
Otherwise data from apps like Instagram will be exposed exclusively via screen sharing.
Health data is available in there, just to go after your example. iPhone backups are also available in there.
At no point am I being asked anything else beyond my Apple ID, password, and two-step approval on another device (such as the Mac) to set up a new iPhone and download all my data.
Thus the outcome is that the Mac indeed has everything it needs to get access to all your iCloud data. In fact, reverse-engineering how to get it directly is unnecessary work - instead, just reverse-engineer enough to capture the Apple ID password (or prompt to it - given there's still no way for the user to tell a real system dialog from one drawn by malware) and approve the 2FA prompt, get an actual, real iPhone and sign into the person's account and then extract all the data from there (via screenshots if necessary).
We do not live in this universe. Consider getting a Chromebook instead if you want to be in that universe. (But then you have a tradeoff: Apple itself seems pretty good about not using your data inappropriately. Google, not so much.)
Put a prompt up that asks for permission? Failing to understand why we're drawing the line on the screen.
Are governments recording the screens of Android users?
Apple is first-party to the device, but third-party to me, the user. Why are they more trustworthy than a free open-source tool? Who the hell are they to tell me who I can and cannot trust?
Similar things were said about iMessage interoperability with Android, until Beeper proved them wrong. They managed to reverse-engineer it, build a compatible client and clearly proved Apple's claims were BS (and no, this didn't lead to a mass-scale compromise of iMessage, contradicting fanboys' claims).
If the feature allows to pull up the iPhone's screen without any user consent, then it is vulnerable to begin with - the reverse-engineering requirement would become an insignificant hurdle compared to the value of such a vulnerability. Presumably however, there will be a consent step, either on the spot or prior (maybe it can reuse the cryptographic pairing mechanism that happens when the phone asks you to "trust this computer?" the first time), and no third-party (whether using an approved API or reverse-engineered) would be able to bypass it without the user intentionally consenting.
The idea that breaking device attestation that is secured through Secure Enclave hardware i.e. not accessible from user code is an insignificant hurdle is hilariously ridiculous. It is borderline impossible for any ordinary developer.
And people that bring up the "just ask the user" argument clearly don't remember how poorly that has worked in the past e.g. Microsoft Vista. Users will blindly approve any dialog which is why Apple has been so careful to limit them to targeted actions which a "do you approve this app to record everything on your iPhone" is not.
If this is true, then my worry isn't even about malicious attackers, it's my neighbor (with a real Mac) being able to (accidentally!) eavesdrop on my phone screen (since according to you this is the primary security measure).
It's obviously ridiculous, and the primary security measure is that there must be a prior key exchange and consent step. If that part is secure, then it would be secure against a third-party.
If that part is not secure, then no Secure Enclave-ing will help you, because worst case scenario, the attacker can just use a real Mac as part of his attack to pass the secure-enclave-protected authentication step, or just exploit the good old "analog hole" by using the real Mac as the main attack vector (and then just capture its HDMI output and feed in inputs via a USB-capable microcontroller simulating a keyboard).
If you’re going to make such a claim, you should be very careful to ensure you’re not misinformed yourself.
> Similar things were said about iMessage interoperability with Android, until Beeper proved them wrong.
No, they did not. We already knew Apple not allowing iMessage on Android was a lock-in choice. The trial with Epic brought that unambiguously to light, years before the release of Beeper Mini¹.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android...
> They managed to reverse-engineer it, build a compatible client and clearly proved Apple's claims were BS
What claims? The only time I remember Apple publicly addressing iMessage on Android was after cutting off Beeper Mini’s access.
¹ Which is an important distinction from the earlier Beeper, which used trickery with iPhones to accomplish the task.
“Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.”
Before there were many stuffs like Apple News never making it but at least there was some pretense of working on it.
Since EU people are getting a less featureful product, they should get products priced accordingly.
Otherwise, Apple should just fuck off EU if it doesn't want to play ball, they started the whole thing by being consumer hostile and the greediest corporation ever, they make Microsoft look like the good guys.
I've been waiting a year for the summarize AI to (not) make it to my Google Pixel 8 Pro. It should be known that everyone outside of the US get a different product than what is advertised online and reviewed on YouTube.
Because the DMA was designed not to be specific about what companies are required to do to be in compliance.
Release their implementation following the guidelines, and see if it passes review, fix and resubmit as needed until it's accepted.
That's how adversarial interoperability worked for decades (and gave free software the ability to interoperate with proprietary formats, see LibreOffice for example) before abusing the DMCA and/or threatening legal action to take down compatible implementations became common practice. I do not recall of any security breaches as a result of this.
Apple are however not going to do that, because doing so would overnight destroy their moat around Universal Clipboard and all their existing interoperability features. So instead they make up some bullshit that non-technical governments and courts will take years to disprove, buying them more time to operate anti-competitively.
It is however sad to see a member of a technical forum gobble up said bullshit.
Hint: it doesn't.
The existence of competitor would by itself be enough proof to the fact that Apple is not restricting competition. But for such a competitor to exist, they would require enough assurance that the business will be viable and they won't get sued out of existence.
Apple either publishing the protocol or at the very least publishing an official licensing agreement allowing anyone to reverse-engineer and reimplement said protocol would achieve this.
Especially given you are so quick to criticise me for gobbling up said bullshit.
Why is Microsoft able to do it just fine (without running afoul of the DMA) while Apple supposedly can't, despite MS having an ever larger marketshare of its field than Apple and this would warrant even more scrutiny?
The multitude of third-party RDP clients (and nobody being threatened with legal action for implementing one) out there may be at least part of the answer.
Not doing so only costs Apple whatever marginal business they expect to lose in EU for not offering this or that feature. So I'd expect more of this going forward.
"gets wise to this" how, exactly? The EU can certainly set conditions which Apple must meet to ship a feature. They have no legal grounds whatsoever to demand that Apple ship that feature to Europe, specially modified to meet their exacting requirements.
How would that even work? One way to comply with the EU's demands that a product work a certain way, is to not sell that product in the EU. Is your stance that EU has a right to force companies to sell their wares in the EU?
It could very well become that after enough of this, DMA 2.0 would have a provision stipulating that any feature withheld in the EU would need to have a valid technical justification that passes review by a panel of independent experts.
Sometimes I wish they tax the hell out of those US behemoth in a way that would open space for EU companies to become competitive. The network effects are too big when it comes to IT, it's not very wise to let the US be the sole beneficiary of such an industry.
For a quick tech demo, it's all fun and games, but when there is real shit to do, nobody wants to fight their tools.
I can see why it is completely fine for your application but you can't say the same for other applications.
Besides it doesn't even make much sense to need that when the thing has such a powerful processor, Apple need to get their shit together and have it run real Mac software and that's it.
It’s hilarious that Apple made such a big deal out of it and then failed to release it for everyone.
This works for all notifications from all apps.
This makes it practically useless for developers.
The same way you do them on Mac. With a trackpad.
This seems to me a difficult challenge in mashing up the wildly different interaction paradigms. I'd love to see how Apple solves it in their new feature.
Apple says "With iPhone Mirroring, users can now fully access and engage with their iPhone right from Mac while iPhone remains locked nearby." And nowhere does Apple say this feature doesn't work for games.
I'm never the kind of person who discounts a feature before I even use it. And I clearly said I haven't used it.
As another comment mentioned, it appears to use the cursor position as the pinch-gesture location.
VNC over wifi is worse than RDP'ing a server across a country if you have good wired fiber connection. But I guess in a pinch if you don't want to look for your iPhone and need a quick interaction.
But I agree that in any case it's largely a gimmick and mainly something for marketing reasons around the ecosystem and all that jazz. It's just like the failed attempt at porting iOS/iPadOS apps to the Mac: makes for a great release announcement/keynote, in practice barely worth using.