Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not sure if Apple did a good job at keeping secrets, or whether there isn't anything to keep a secret about?

We're expecting new software, but that's easy for Apple to keep under wraps as it doesn't really have to be used outside Cupertino, unlike manufactured products like an iPhone. Nothing abnormally secret there.

We're expecting new MacBooks, but the rumour is a move to Haswell, which would only be a spec bump, no new major design, and we have had new model numbers leaked. Nothing abnormally secret again.

There might be a new Mac Pro, but this is supposedly being manufactured in the US meaning there is less of a supply chain to leak from, and my guess is that it's not in manufacturing yet anyway and if one is announced it will be a little way off (it was slated for 'later in 2013').

If there is an entirely new product (probably something TV related) then that would be a big secret that was well kept. But I'm not putting money on that happening. I'm not sure Apple has been any better at keeping secrets than recent years at all.

I am happy if they add a share button like the Android one. It's a small wish but it's clear that Apple is falling behind in many areas except performance and battery life on tablets.

Relaxing App Store rules to include programming languages/VMs will give a little boost to our community too. If I want to learn Haskell I want to do it on the iPad.

Haskell and VMs are not against the App Store rules at all, you just cannot JIT anything. The ban against non-C languages was only in place long enough to scare Adobe away.

That's not true. An app cannot run code not part of the original app package. This was a huge problem for projects like the Commodore 64 emulator.

There are many examples of programming language runtime apps, such as

Scheme: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gambit-repl/id434534076

OCaml: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ocamlexample/id396515573

Python: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/python-3.3-for-ios/id5779112...

Codea (LUA): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171

What restricts these apps from being awesome is that they cannot download source code or accept source code pushed to them from other apps. Cut-n-paste is the only way to transfer existing code.

> they cannot download source code

The Python app can download arbitrary data with nothing more than a simple urllib call. Feed it into eval, and you're done.

Those rules were relaxed three years ago.

http://n4g.com/news/607824/apple-approves-manomios-c64-2-0-a...

The way apps can interoperate in Android is definitely an advantage over iOS for developers, but it's a security/sandbox issue not a lack of capability in the OS. iOS hugely trails Android in malware... Coincidence?

App Store allows programming languages and even VMs. It doesn't allow running externally sourced code.

It is a security issue, but I don't think it is what is causing the Android malware issue. The Intents system on Android is a security issue because most developers don't use it smartly and end up exposing their apps to SQL injection on the internal SQLite database they use.

Actually, the fact that Android uses a virtual machine for it's code has pretty good security benefits over running native code as on iOS.

Actually, the fact that Android uses a virtual machine for it's code has pretty good security benefits over running native code as on iOS.

Howso? I'm trying to think of what a VM could guard against aside from illegal memory accesses, which of course iOS hardware (like any other modern hardware) guards against for native code.

As everything must eventually exit the VM to use hardware or certain features, you have more control over the boundary. On iOS, as you run native code, you could theoretically do direct device access in assembly and the OS has far less control over that. It is also possible to inspect the bytecode for a Java program and know with much more certainty what it's going to try and do, which instructions it will try and run, etc.

On iOS, as you run native code, you could theoretically do direct device access in assembly and the OS has far less control over that.

But the hardware access protection ensures user code doesn't access anything it's not supposed to. And its up to device drivers to manage devices and ensure that access to them by user code is done properly.

Static inspection of Java bytecode can allow you to verify the safety of some things and so do fewer checks at runtime; but to my understanding, native code has all the same protections in the end as code running in a VM.

This is true in theory if not practice, but the point is that Apple blocks third party VMs (or did).

Any malware issues on Android have more to do with differences in vetting than the intents system.

Bullshit. Windows RT has similar app interoperability and significantly advanced share functionality when compared to iOS and yet has no 'security issue' nor 'malware'.

No users either.

But the same can be applied to copy&paste. We are not talking about rocket science....

> Nothing abnormally secret again.

What do you mean by this? You listed the things that we do know, then said nothing about those things are abnormally secret.

I mean that the secrets aren't likely to be anything out of the ordinary for Apple given the last few years.

We don't know much about the software, as usual, and we know pretty much what the hardware will be, as usual, with the exception possibly being a new Mac Pro, which I'm not sure is going to be released soon, although it might be announced.

>> "We're expecting new software, but that's easy for Apple to keep under wraps as it doesn't really have to be used outside Cupertino"

I would assume they have to use iOS out in the field to test things like Maps and any changes they've made to the software controlling the radio signals.

Testing it in the field without detection is quite easy to do in the Valley. It's not like being in SF or NYC, where you could always have someone peeking over your shoulder.

It would be very difficult to know if the person near you is using a secret version of the software.

One thing we know is that Apple's test units have narrow field of view overlays to make sneaking a peek harder.

Historically Apple software hasn't really been leaked that much as far as I can tell. The fact we don't know anything about iOS 7 or OS X 10.9 isn't anything new, that's the same as every OS release.

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