The App Store was always authoritarian
infrequently.org
infrequently.org
The idea that a CEO will stand up to his democratically elected dictator is absurd. Why should he, when the dictator is merely implementing the policies he said he would during the campaign and still got elected? Why should he make himself and his company and his shareholders martyrs?
Because many people hold Apple to higher standards, that is why.
Nothing you allege was missed, and indeed it was considered at length in the longer series on these topics:
Like I said, it is a good article, about an important topic, but you already knew that. I mostly agree with you - not that my opinion is particularly important. It prompted me to comment for only the second time.
I’ll take a lot at the rest of the series later.
This is exactly what Apple did when they stood their ground against the FBI in the case of the San Bernardino shooter though. Of course, Obama could hardly be called a dictator, and wasn't a petty, vindictive man like our current president. But it'd still be good to see Cook rediscover that "fuck you, make me" attitude from the old Apple.
Not really; I'd have the same expectation of any other individual or company of the given size.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_as_speech
(It was later partly rejected by other courts in the DMCA anticircumvention context.)
This argument doesn't imply that companies have to help you publish your software, because they might be entitled to some kind of editorial control over which speech they do or don't distribute. But it does at least imply that the stakes of such control are very high and that free speech norms may be implicated by them!
Having some kind of hidden “I know what I’m doing” mode would make sense, but would probably defeated the same way as “I’ll teach you how to open browser console” to paste some command exploits.
Both of those things existed in the early 2000s, but if the risk of a loan can (appear to) be shifted onto someone else, banks can and will issue bigger and riskier loans to people, and will reward the individual people selling the loans personally.
iPhones become e-waste at that point, due to the discussed restrictions.
What I find interesting is that there's been little interesting making something like QubesOS for as many consumer devices (portables as well as desktop) as possible with an interface as painless as possible so people actually use it, and then the blast radius from any problem is smaller. There's also the hosted services side of computing where isolation on the same host is an expected feature and vulnerabilities like meltdown/spectre are such a big deal over the past 8 years, but it only gets seen as a curiosity on consumer devices.
I know it's on a much, much smaller scale, but I'd say the move to sandboxing apps / browser tabs / profiles is aiming for precisely that and in a way that's invisible to most users, which is probably for the better.
The DMA in EU has alternate app stores being created, for example. That's some kind of point in between these two. But it still feels like if that's your only option, you'll get ICEBlock blocked in those markets too in many cases.
I just don’t see us righting ourselves through the electoral process. If we are ever going to fix our government it will need to happen through mass strikes. That’s the most credible alternative. In the meantime our state of affairs will likely continue to decay. Climate change, authoritarianism, debt and austerity. These are only going to get worse. Eventually we will be forced to get our collective act together.
Surely you don’t want your fellow citizens to fall for Russian, Chinese, Another State Actor propaganda?
State surveillance on unprecedented level? Don’t be paranoid! Surely a state actor would never abuse the power to snoop for your private photos[2]!
Electronic waste? Duopoly? Censorship? Ownership? Those are made up words, comrade!
[1] - https://youtu.be/cwCtM6D4GOc
[2] - https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/karen-r...
Centralized Appstore monopolies are best friends of the authoritarian governments. Both Google and Apple readily removed any app the local government points them to, saying that they are committed to working in accordance with the legislation of countries where they provide their services.
"....but added that it complies with the local laws of each particular country." [0]
[0]: https://www.techspot.com/news/67701-russia-tells-apple-googl...
I laughed out loud at this. Google lost two antitrust lawsuits this year alone.
The only way to ensure this doesn't happen is to criminalise device manufacturers being in charge of what software runs on their devices.
I don't doubt that there are laptops where it is hard, but I would love to hear some examples and in what way the UEFI firmware is nailed down such that you cannot install Linux?
https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/docs/2024-App-Sto...
says that there are over 1700 apps removed per year due to "government takedown demands". Since this is separate from about 2 million (!) apps they rejected from the app store and about 80,000 apps they removed from the app store on their own initiative, it stands to reason that they would have disagreed with quite a lot of those requests, but they still obeyed them.
One could think about this in at least two ways:
(1) If the 2,000,000 apps they rejected or the 80,000 apps they removed on their own initiative were very dangerous or very harmful in some way, one might believe that Apple's huge and arbitrary power over iPhones is ultimately beneficial because it's mostly used to protect people, and only slightly used to uphold state power over citizens.
(2) If you compare this to the baseline of "OS developers shouldn't decide what software you can run", then it's already, well, thousands of programs, probably often quite popular ones, that people are being intentionally prevented from using because their governments disapprove. And probably quite routinely for reasons that large parts of the population would disagree with. It is already a frequent event; in some countries (it's a long tail so the absolute majority of the removals in 2024 were attributable to the PRC!) it's plausible that most iPhone users directly experience the results of app censorship.
(You could add to this that users would also be divided about some of Apple's decisions on its own initiative, primarily apps that the company banned for sexual or violent content, usually fictional. Some users may agree with Apple using its power this way and other users may disagree. A recent example is that they've banned the SpicyChat AI erotic chat app, and probably many other "AI boyfriend/girlfriend" apps. In the past, they've banned apps created by various porn sites.)
I think this issue is confusing. I've always believed that device owners should have complete control of their computing devices and not be subject to other people's power when using them. You can see people in this thread pointing out that sometimes this power is being used to protect users (including from having their devices hijacked by malicious third parties, which would also tend to significantly undermine their control of their devices... although one can then argue about what responsibility different parties had to actively prevent that outcome). The argument that technological paternalism contributes to maximizing users' practical control is an argument that must be engaged with. And also, sometimes it's simply not being used to protect users at all.
By the way, if you get into the object level issue then you can get even more confused:
(1) I think the U.S. government probably wanted to ban this particular app merely because it was successful at helping people avoid deportation. But it might turn out that, with this app or with some future app that looks superficially similar, it actually is being used to coordinate violent attacks, even if the developer didn't intend that outcome. At some point, governments will have a case that there is some kind of meaningful physical-world harm associated with the observed usage of some piece of software. (More on that in other points below.)
(2) If Apple literally prevented itself from having the power to approve or reject software for iOS (e.g. by allowing "sideloading", which was the norm for almost all historical computing environments), then you literally could have apps that explicitly describe themselves as meant to coordinate violence (against law enforcement, against minority groups, against specific people, or whatever). This is not a strawman. It's really easy to write such an app. There is no reason to think that people who know how to write apps are all refraining from writing violence-coordination apps. In other contexts, people might be able to agree not to blame toolmakers for downstream uses of their tools, like not blaming radio manufacturers for having their radios be able to receive the broadcast incitements to genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. So maybe we would eventually similarly be able to agree not to blame Apple for making an OS that could run the "Let's Kill ______" third-party app. But we should understand that on some occasions such an app would probably exist. You know, there are video games whose content is actually pretty gross by almost any given standard. A lot of people have been able to agree that those games can exist, or at least that people other than the developers bear no responsibility for their availability.
(3) You could say that Apple should just make good ethical object-level case-by-case decisions about how to use its power, which is probably what they try to do most of the time, but they sometimes fail, or sometimes there isn't a consensus within the company or within a society about what the right call should be. In this case, we're going to be back here again and again talking about the merits of different app bans, when they manage to get wide enough attention. Remember, again, there were already 1700 app bans per year last year, and presumably lots of governments are only just waking up to the possibility of demanding them!
(4) Governments are already using offline harms to justify incredibly intrusive control of computing and communications. Some of those offline harms are real, not speculative. For example, there really were lynchings coordinated via WhatsApp groups and via WhatsApp memes in several developing countries. The remedies and "solutions" that many governments have suggested in response to such things are incredibly scary.
Of course, tech makes all of this more efficient but it's not like if the government does not have access to the tool as well and it's not like if they didn't come up with yet many more creative ways to control and punish undesirable behavior.
Best (worst) case scenario it's fair game but with their control the common law-abiding man just gets fucked in the end for not much benefits (fake security yeah).
I have been patronized about this for years, but I still maintain that Jobs' opposition to Flash was its conflict with the App Store, and not that it was a security problem as he and his flying monkeys insisted.
Such as?
> Providing a central distribution point for such programs is not a bad thing—Linux distros do it all the time.
It is a bad thing if it is
A) the only source of distribution
B) controlled only by the software vendor providing the OS
WebAssembly will run natively if ECMAScript is holding you back.
While it's still on a VM, so is Java, and that's the only mainstream game in town for "native" Android apps.
It'd be exciting to see what the web could be if Apple didn't spend decades dragging their heels implementing standards for progressive web apps (PWAs) because they know it'll cut into their app store gravy train.
Also, most native apps are just web views anyway.
Corporate tax in Apple land is 30%
Funny?
If Apple were a country, it wouldn't just be authoritarian, it'd be a dictatorship with a 30% flat tax on revenue, no appeals, and the power to erase your business overnight
Hence the parallel, but yeah fair point, I wrote the comment too fast
I’m trying to communicate with relatives of my partner while on holiday. We have iPhones, they all have Androids. We asked them to install “ChatGPT” because its voice mode is shockingly good at near-real-time translation.
When I type “ChatGPT” into the Apple App Store, the top hit is… drumroll… the very same, by OpenAI.
My uncle in law was struggling a bit on his phone and showed me what came up: a wall of fakes. Scam app after scam app, all with similar icons and similar names “GPT Talk”, “Chatty GTP”, and garbage like that.
Why would anyone want this?
Why would I prefer this?
Why would you… unless you’re an “app developer” working for… not the company that ought to be getting the first and only search result.
The problem here — specifically here on Hacker News — is that a lot of you work for those companies. Startups faking till they make it, engaging in guerrilla marketing, less then perfectly legal practices… hoping to be the next Uber or AirBnB by emulating them.
Politely, and with all due respect: Bugger off.
Your arguments come from unclean hands.
Most of the world likes the authority of the App Store.
If you don’t, if you’re vocal about “rules are bad!” it says volumes about you, not the rules and the people that enforce them.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist [0]
The problem with Apple (and to a lesser extent Google) is that it goes way further than that. It dictates what technologies you can use, it dictates a ton of specific rules for how your app should behave, it gatekeeps your bug fixes, it takes an absolutely obnoxious share of your revenue while providing just bare minimum service, with decades old bugs you have to workaround. Many of those things also makes the service worse for their users - it really feels like as a developer for their platform, you're in a hostile relationship with them, and pay for it.
- The Play Store being bad does not mean the App Store is not also bad
- How do you know most of the world likes the authority of the App Store? Is it not more likely that most of the world are ignorant of its rules, and assumes a free and open marketplace?
> The Play Store being bad
The Play Store is actually merely “slightly worse” than the App Store. The problem was that my uncle in law was using some other “alternative app store” because Android allows this and then … inevitably … some lazy or corrupt app vendors encourage their use or outright require it. Or a phone manufacturer will try to make an extra 50c per device by inserting themselves (or a “valued partner”) between users and legitimate providers.
You’ll see arguments for this, right here, espoused vehemently by people that must really, desperately get away from oversight.
> free and open marketplace
That’s not a good thing.
By this standard, people shouldn't be allowed to drive because sometime they fuck up by drinking and/or driving too fast.
Everybody is responsible for their own life, own choices, etc. I'm amazed that a company that is supposedly progressive liberal can get away with such bullshit.
But at the same time, I know very well the pseudo-progressives are always authoritarians who think they know better and want to impose their morals/rules on everyone, stealing agency from people while pretending to be doing good. Apple is a perfect example.
The place where your uncle in law was finding scam apps was not some obscure website where he was downloading scam APKs. It was a centralized store from Google, just a poorly managed one.
I, for that matter, use Android. Not out of love for Google (much to the opposite, I despise them and everything they do), but out of a lack of alternative. I do value the freedom to at least use an alternative store (F-Droid), and a system that is not completely hostile to a user that has at least a semblance of an idea of what he is doing.
> the alternative to authority is anarchy.
No. Anarchy always devolves into authoritarianism. Those with the bigger stick will rule over the others through strength.
The only alternative to authority is the very imperfect freedom that comes with democracy. It sort of sucks, it is full of compromises, and is something that ensures that no one will be perfectly happy. But it's so much better than your desire to have a boot on your neck.
I always wonder at the logic that leads the these kinds of statements. What alternate universe do people come from… without Apple?
I regularly see a similar attitude, most often here, that Microsoft and Azure don’t even exist.
Apple and Microsoft are imperfect, sure. But they do exist, and they’re perfectly viable options for … checks notes … billions upon billions of people.
Apple is not an alternative for my needs.
> Apple and Microsoft are imperfect, sure. But they do exist, and they’re perfectly viable options for … checks notes … billions upon billions of people.
There is no Microsoft smartphone OS (and back when one existed, it was a piece of turd).
I know that there is are Linux smartphones. Unfortunately many apps I need do not support that.
Currently, my options are limited to Lineage OS. Graphene or e/OS may be a possibility once I switch cell phones again.
As much as I despise Google, that sentiment pales in comparison to my hatred and disgust for anything Apple. Having to use their awful laptops for work is enough annoyance.