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Comment by HHad3 | Hacker News Reader

I would welcome if this global legislative push would end up in a more open app ecosystem for iOS overall.

BrowserEngineKit is a thin wrapper over XPC and iOS' extension system. The system would be so much better to develop for if XPC was an open API, and JIT for isolated sub-processes was permitted without Apple's blessing.

* Messengers could have separate sub-processes for preprocessing untrusted inputs -- iMessage already does this, third-party messengers are single-process and cannot.

* Applications could isolate unstable components for better user experience and crash recovery.

* Emulators, e.g. for retro systems, would benefit from speedy emulation.

* WASM would become useful in iOS.

* Browser could use XPC without special-purpose API wrappers such as BrowserEngineKit.

But alas, all of this would make it easier to load code that runs at native speed into an iOS app after a store review happened, and as we all know that'll be the end of the world.

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>and as we all know that'll be the end of the world.

I'll enjoy seeing all the accounts on MacRumors clawing their eyes out when that happens.

It would be naive to think that Apple isn't funding sites and narratives on the internet to serve their economic interests.

One of the most outlandish one being that freedom to use your phone however you want would necessarily compromise security and privacy for everyone. It's such a bizarre and indefencible take, and yet it's repeated over and over again on those Apple-worship platforms.

Freedom to use your phone however you like would make bug tracking on Apple's side more complicated and therefore more expensive and therefore it damages their profit bottom line. They would happily freeze development altogether if it was a feasible option.

> ... freedom to use your phone however you want

I want to use my phone locked down hard and apps reviewed by Apple. I sleep better with things as they are. I suspect 99% of normal users are in the same boat.

Apple must provide opt-in or opt-out for the lockdown.

The market provides these options already.

Then Facebook will grant its app all permission entitlements, and will direct all users to opt-out lockdown for the app to work.

Are they doing that on Android right now?

OP, nuker, please answer, i'm genuinely curious what you think about this

"Former Facebook insiders explain why the company is making such a big fuss over Apple's upcoming privacy change"

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/11/why-facebook-is-so-upset...

I have not heard similar tantrum from FB over Android. Makes sense as it is made by an Ad company.

that was not the question the question was:

You:

>Then Facebook will grant its app all permission entitlements, and will direct all users to opt-out lockdown for the app to work.

input_sh:

> Are they doing that on Android right now?

So is Facebook granting its app all permission entitlements, and directing all users to opt-out lockdown for the app to work on Android?

They don't, no need, Android works for them. They don't on iOS too, iOS alt app stores did not hit US yet. They will, if iOS alt stores will become global thing, or the hypothetical "lockdown opt-out", that started the whole thread.

They never answer this one.

Fair enough, and then your iOS should just report the list of permissions the app demanded, maybe even compare to the AppStore version, and then let people make their choice. It doesn't have to be a "one click" easy way to make mistakes. Most users won't bother to go through 3 extra steps to install the "alternative" app if they aren't missing anything in the regular one.

The OS should anyway sandbox everything, and be as isolated as possible from any app running on top of it. That's the real security, everything else is mostly privacy - as in it's not really a security issue that the FB app siphons all the data I allowed it to access.

> and then let people make their choice.

Some apps are de-facto unavoidable, like Facebook, Whatsapp and X.

The only one of those on my phone is X and it's definitely avoidable.

I have, in fact, none of these on my phone.

That seems like a bit of a stretch.

Whatsapp is probably the hardest to avoid for most people in parts of the world where it's dominant. The number of people who need to use Facebook or Twitter is likely much smaller, and very few of those need to install a native app instead of using the website.

They absolutely are not. No more than alcohol or tobacco addiction are de-facto unavoidable. And the people who are absolutely addicted to those platforms will always have the option of the web page no matter what you do to the app.

Ah yes, like "alcohol or tobacco," communicating with people is an addiction that must be stopped. Participating in society is a choice. /s

WhatsApp is used to talk to people across the world. It’s not like tobacco at all.

If I got off WhatsApp which I use for like 10 minutes a week, I’d have a harder time communicating with a handful of people outside the US

Twitter is incredibly avoidable. Everything about it is likely faked and exaggerated. Revenue/profit for sure. Number of users for sure. Number of users that aren’t bots for sure too.

I use Twitter everyday because of my politics interest but it isn’t that popular any more (I know the supposed numbers say otherwise)

I think the real issue is that without enforcement measures, apps by bad actors like Facebook have free rein to find holes in the sandbox and similar. Even in the event that iOS allows choice of App Store globally, it might not be the worst thing to let them keep a kill switch on automatic distribution of individual apps (which once flipped off, users would need to sideload the app in question) so when some third party dev tries to pull that kind of stunt there will be consequences.

Then Apple can just work harder on securing the OS. When desktop OS security is discussed does anyone ever seriously float the idea that maybe we should only allow MS, Apple, or Linus approved apps to run on the OS to avoid hackers having free rein to find holes?

The market for sideloading apps is anyway much smaller than the whole mobile market because most people can’t be bothered to do it. The ones determined to install that shady flashlight app they downloaded from the internet will just as well give their banking credentials to any app that asks for them.

No matter how much Apple invests into security, parties like Meta will find holes to exploit because it’s profitable to do so. It’s a cat and mouse game, and so even though Apple should be investing in security they also need to be able to put an end to the game when there’s obvious abuse afoot.

I’m not as supportive of this ability for computers, but the market is so broad and large for mobile devices that I feel it’s a bit of a different creature.

And yes, I agree that for sideloaded apps all bets are off. That’s why I mentioned Apple having a kill switch only on automated distribution, e.g. through app stores (first party or otherwise). So for example if it turns out that Facebook has been making constant use of exploits for a while, jumping from one to the next as they’re fixed — in this situation Apple can stop it from being installed or updated from any app store (even one run by Meta), meaning the only way to install or update it is through fully manual side loading until they clean their act up.

Meta doesn’t need to hack your OS. It’s not only cheaper to just ask you to give them all the access that matters to your data, it also poses less legal risk. You accept to install their alternative app and give them all the data they ask for.

Whatever technical tricks Meta is using today pass Apple’s review and implicit endorsement. Whatever tricks they use in the future to escape the sandbox and access (hack) the OS with the sideloaded app are unilateral. Could open up a legal can of worms.

I’d be more concerned about the shady flashlight app downloaded from some corner of the internet. Or the Fakebook app, the all-in-one social media aggregator, the fake banking apps.

You should probably not use Facebook then.

How is it that the answer to an American megacorp trying to hoover all of your personal data is to try to get another American megacorp to add universal barricades to your device?

> How is it that the answer to an American megacorp trying to hoover all of your personal data is to try to get another American megacorp to add universal barricades to your device?

Because only Apple has the power to stop Chrome from being the only browser (like IE) or to stop Meta from insisting you give up all privacy. A government may be able to do it within their own borders for a period of time, but Meta, Google and Apple are all larger and more powerful than the majority of countries out there.

> A government may be able to do it within their own borders for a period of time

Part of the problem is the governments are proving they aren’t interested in doing it. Aside from the fact that law enforcement agencies are happy to have easily legally compelled data like this, the governments are actively fighting e2e encryption and strong on device encryption. And then on top of that, if they really were interested in solving that problem, you’d think they’d be spending legislative power on solving that before solving forcing the 2nd place market competitor to open their OS up.

In regards to browser lock down Apple wants to be the only game in town. Safari allows plug-in's but Apple doesn't allow 3rd parties to provide plugins themselves. They do this to create an unequal advantage.

Opt-in is at time of purchase

You can choose between a locked down system, iOS, and a free one, Android. No-one is forcing you to buy an Apple device.

And you will get 20 times telemetry as a bonus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

What you want is not relevant, because you have no choice.

Apple depriving you of that choice may not inconvenience you, but you are still being deprived of that freedom in the first place. I suspect 100% of iPhone users are in the same boat.

> What you want is not relevant, because you have no choice.

You got this backwards. I chose Apple because of the choices they made and it suited me.

Electing a dictator because you like their policies does not change the fact that you end up in a dictatorship.

Likewise, having voted for a corporation that takes away freedoms does not make your opinion relevant: you are still not the one in control, and neither is anyone else who bought in.

Those "99%" wouldn't be affected by this change as they can continue to use Safari and the App Store exactly as they do now.

... In which case literally nothing changes for you. You can keep using safari.

I don't know what it is with this recent redefining of freedom to mean "the freedom to restrict others freedoms".

Even if 99.9999% of users want to only use safari, ever, you don't need to only allow safari. There's no gun to your head making you download Firefox.

Want to use a locked down browser? That's totally fine, that's always been allowed.

The security thing is BS anyway; Apple aren't perfect at security and having only one option can make this worse.

Google's Project Zero uncovered quite a few 0 days in Apple's "perfect" operating system. They're not magical wizard cult gods over there, they're just a buncha developers same as 'em all. And given the quality of what's been coming out of Apple _and_ Google recently sometimes I wonder if someone's dug a pit under their supposedly high bars they held in the 2010s. Even just Youtube is a disgustingly buggy app nowadays.

> One of the most outlandish one being that freedom to use your phone however you want would necessarily compromise security and privacy for everyone.

I suppose in a round-a-bout way, it could, more specifically around iMessage, which is Apple's baby in the US and a big part of their lock in effect for US users.

Right now, you can reasonably assume that using iMessage with another iPhone user that both ends are reasonably secure and private. Break open the walls of the garden and now you could say that you can't trust that the other end you are communicating with hasn't installed some random crapware or malware that's scraping their messages, or recording the screen during a facetime call, thereby compromising your own privacy by interacting with a bad devices.

In that instance, Apple is correct - but what Apple doesn't tell people is that all other forms of digital communication are open to the same risks so they aren't special.

Is iMessage really that big a deal to people, for privacy / security particularly?

Practically speaking I can’t even tell the difference, apart from text messages sometimes failing to send, and getting the option to retry as SMS.

If I want something private / secure, I use Signal.

Folks do like renaming group chats, typing indicators, perhaps scheduled send (though too new to say without asking around).

And it feels a little better, personally, sending an innocuous iMessage—even though I won't get in trouble if a stingray happens to pick up “gm” “Happy birthday!” “Kevin forgot the biscuits again!” over SMS.

Self-destructing Signal for the most personal messages for sure. But SMS just feels dirty. Too exposed even if I’d shout the same message contents in a public square.

Yes, people use iMessage to securely share/collaborate on many objects in iOS, like a shared Apple Note. It is used for much more than just sending text messages back and forth.

I use Signal but it leaves much to be desired relative to iMessage for a lot of uses.

Only in the US, where Apple has an AOL-like lock-in. The market share for iOS in Canada is similarly large but there is no iMessage lock-in here as Canada had Blackberry Messenger (also a lock-in app) way before iMessage, and shifted to FB Messenger and Whatsapp once BBM faded. Nowadays most people have both apps installed, and what you use depends on where the group chat was started.

> Right now, you can reasonably assume that using iMessage with another iPhone user that both ends are reasonably secure and private.

I'd disagree, given that many people have iCloud Backup enabled, which (at least without "Advanced Data Protection") uses encryption keys available to Apple and includes all iMessage and SMS messages.

>reasonably secure

“These memes will be leaked to the feds if my friend causes Apple to be subpoenaed” is much more palatable than “every text I send my girlfriend is being used to train an LLM by iPhoneFolderCleanerLLCAssociates”

I know iCloud backups are not perfectly secure. I like the privacy aspect of iMessage as it stands, even if it’s not quite Cone of Silence. _Definitely_ we could have more freedom on iOS! Just without worrying about adware scrapers somehow… without worrying about grandma increasing my tech support burden when a scammer calls her… (shrug)

Random crapware or malware is still subject to app sandboxing.

Can you give an example of what your concern is?

You could be talking to someone who has a Mac, though.

>freedom to use your phone however you want would necessarily compromise security and privacy for everyone.

For a large enough definition of "everyone", it would. "Everyone" has a Meta app installed. We've seen them pull evil tricks over and over to suck up data 24/7 - most recently running a local server on Android that their websites could talk to to bypass anonymization - and the moment a crack appears in the walled garden Meta will say "go install the FB/Instagram app from our app store with no privacy policy reviews" and a large enough definition of everybody will be much the worse for it.

i take it you dont use desktops or laptops then?

I don't see the relevance of this question. Neither what I do nor whether I own a desktop/laptop impact the overwhelming trends of how society interacts with technology.

Most people on desktops / laptops interact with these services via a web browser, which has very limited permissions on the system. Not sure how you could control that tightly on a fully open iOS.

So iOS must allow web apps.

It does, doesn't it? Even if you stretch "web app" to mean "PWA" iOS supports them. And it definitely supports the literal definition of "web app" (i.e. loading a website in a browser that runs JS or whatever to perform its "app" functionality).

According to this discussion, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39563618, they don't behave in the same way or have all features.

E.g., For support, the Progressive Web Apps will still need to be built on WebKit, with all that entails.

> and the moment a crack appears in the walled garden Meta will say "go install the FB/Instagram app from our app store with no privacy policy reviews"

People keep saying this, but how do you explain the years and years of Meta/Facebook operating on Android without ever doing this?

It hasn't been possible until very recently. The Epic case has still been going through the courts, so there's been no reason for Meta to show their hand before that's final.

They HAVE been finding every loophole, crack in the Play Store policies, or Android bug they can exploit to steal data.

Alternative stores on Android have been possible since day one - there are several of them. That's not what the Epic case is about.

> Meta will say "go install the FB/Instagram app from our app store

This didn't happen even on Android. Why would it happen on iOS?

You know what I got my parents an iPhone? To avoid having to worry about stuff.

Now I have to worry about the inevitable phone call from ‘Apple Technical Support

I remember when HN would literally shadowban you for suggesting they do this.

Now with 'troll farms'/'reputation management' being so ubiquitous, we'd call Apple irresponsible to not be doing this.

On iOS, I can trust that pretty much everyone in my family won't download something silly that then creates a security hole in their devices. Not sure how you could guarantee that if you could load code post-review. What would be the point of the review, then? Wouldn't the App Store be littered with trojan horses in waiting?

> Wouldn't the App Store be littered with trojan horses in waiting?

It already is littered with outright scams, apps pretending to be other apps etc.

This also shifts a tremendous amount of the burden for preventing system-level malware onto the app sandbox, which today is only one component of a multi-layered defense-in-depth system of notarization, entitlements, app review, etc.

To be clear I support letting people run whatever apps they want, but let’s not pretend that this won’t make the median iPhone more prone to have a malware infection (like Android). There are reasons other than anticompetitive greed that Apple does things this way (although I am sure greed is the primary motivator).

Apple doesn't instrument apps when they review them. That burden is already there, they've just convinced you otherwise.

I think it depends on the app and the entitlements. I would assume apps that request entitlements for system-level VPN apis are scrutinized more than calculators.

All they do either way is poke at the GUI and maybe watch the HTTP requests.

The real goal of the review process is to maintain control over the UX, not prevent malware. If you want to see a review process that stops malware read a Linux distribution mailing list.

And Facebook spies on users and competitors for years despite all the "reviews": https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47281906

Apple doesn't review apps the way people think it does.

The rules for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to get kicked out of the App Store are not the same as the rules for other companies’ apps to get kicked out of the App Store.

The browser itself is some kind of app store, and we run app from it all the time without Apple's review. Given this, I'm not sure why Apple and its fanboys make so much of this supposed security of the AppStore

thank fuck i dont have to deal with that shit

Not only speedy emulation, but more efficient too, since it doesn't have to struggle so much through interpretation. That would help battery life and keep phones from heating up just playing a game from 2008.

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