

Hewitt is Right, Ament is Wrong - billymeltdown
http://www.zetetic.net/blog/2009/09/02/hewitt-is-right-ament-is-wrong/

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rbarooah
This argument sets up a false dichotomy. Comparing the internet to the app
store and claiming that just because the internet is a free for all, every
service that is built on top of it 'should' also be a free for all is simply
illogical.

Because the internet is as free as it is, we have the fortune of being able to
choose between a heavily curated store - the apple app store, and some
competitors who claim they will be more open - e.g. the Android Market.

This is analogous to what happens in the high street. I could rent a retail
space, and then allow anyone who wants to come in and set up a table selling
any legal goods, or I could rent the same space and carefully choose products
that I think my customers will value.

Some people will prefer the trading hall, and others will prefer the
department store.

The point is that it's a good thing that Apple can provide this more curated
option for those of us who want it, and that others can provide alternatives
for those who don't like Apple's approach.

The real tyranny would be if Apple were forced to stop being the gatekeeper
for the iPhone - that's when a choice would be lost to us.

For right now, I think Apple has the best model by a long way, even though
it's not perfect.

I'm quite prepared to believe that I'll be buying an Android phone in a couple
of years if the more open ecosystem turns out to be better at producing useful
applications, but I'd like to see that determined empirically - by allowing
both approaches to be tested, rather than having the App store torn down or
undermined because of ideology.

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SamAtt
What the author misses is phones present dangers and costs that PCs don't. So
his philosophy of "we've gotten by in the past and our PCs never had a review
process" doesn't hold up.

In fact, it ignores the fact that a large percentage of the computers out
there are part of one botnet or another. On the desktop it isn't that big a
hindrance since high speed connections are cheap and unlimited. But if we open
cell phones up to the same risk you're going to see serious consequences.

Forget bots pushing spam, forget monstrous phone bills, imagine a cell phone
trojan that actually launches calls. It's a lot easier to create an effective
DoS attack against phone lines.

There's a reason why even open leaning Google has a review process for their
app store.

~~~
kwantam
> There's a reason why even open leaning Google has a review process for their
> app store.

You're either misinformed or being somewhat disingenuous comparing the Android
review process to the App Store one. The Android review process consists of
pretty much instantaneously running a piece of sanity check software against
the putative application, and then immediately approving or rejecting it.

Yes, Google still has the ability to reverse decisions later, but this is more
or less the only part where their "review process" is on par with Apple's.
Anyway, you would expect that anyone running an application store would
maintain this ability, at the very least to remove abusive or somehow illegal
pieces of software.

(I'm not saying that I would never disagree with Google's particular decisions
regarding their ability to remove applications. I'm saying that the Android
model is pretty much exactly what the article is proposing for the App Store.)

~~~
SamAtt
Where did I say that Apple's app store process was identical to Google's? Or
even close?

The original article quoted a post endorsing the idea of no approval process
while saying the person writing that article was right. To me that's an
endorsement of no approval process and I was responding to that by saying even
Google has some kind of approval process in place.

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skolor
Really, we're not talking about being the gatekeepers to the iPhone, Apple is
the gatekeeper to the App Store, nothing more. It doesn't seem that big of a
deal for Apple to continue to review applications for the App Store, but allow
another method (short of jailbreaking) to add non-reviewed apps to your phone
too.

~~~
dkarl
It's a PR and brand management thing. Apple knows that anything heinous or
broken on the iPhone reflects poorly on Apple. However Apple tries to wash its
hands or disclaim responsibility, the animus attached to bad apps will rub off
on Apple. That's reality; it can't be changed by fiat.

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misuba
The bad press about App Store polices play big here, and elsewhere in the tech
press, but in the general press? People don't care about a developer's woes
unless they themselves are developers. Only a few people care about apps they
aren't getting access to due to Apple's policies.

On the other hand, if there were rogue apps out there, that would be nightly
news material. Even just the words "rogue apps" should tell you that.

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bitwize
Yes, that's how the internet should work and that's how personal computers
should work, for everyone but people like us.

Closed platforms rock. The mythical End User just loves himself a closed
platform. It means there's some company out there betting their reputation and
their bottom line that no malicious, harmful, or otherwise undesirable
software will find its way on their device. And that's a guarantee that sells
devices. Look at what the "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality" did for video
games, for instance.

The future of development is closed source on a closed platform. That's where
customers' attention, and money, will be focused.

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tptacek
This article will get upvoted because people hate the app review process, but
the logic in the article is flawed, as was Hewitt's. Whatever they may say
about the "sandboxing", the iPhone is running native code on a little box that
can listen to your phone calls, access your voice mail, and probably log in to
your email account. When the little box goes crazy, it can disrupt the GSM
network.

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boucher
Apple builds security against those types of attacks into the OS and the SDK.
The review process basically adds no additional protection. Holes in the SDK
which accidentally expose such features can still be exploited, and those
exploits are highly unlikely to be detected by Apple.

~~~
tptacek
It's true that the review process won't catch these problems, but the process
increases accountability.

I'm not arguing in favor of or against reviewing though. I'm just pointing out
the flaw in Hewitt's logic. There's no magic sandbox that will reliably keep
an iPhone app away from the dialer. That's in stark contrast with sandbox
systems like Java, where the dollar value of a sandbox break is extremely
high.

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mcav
s/Ament/Arment/g

