> This is a trade-off, but there's a certain kind of person in tech that thinks app stores and the iOS sandbox have nothing to do with the success of smartphones and the iPhone - they're just a stupid Apple thing you could get rid of with no ill effects.
> Unfortunately, you can’t have your cake and eat it. A secure system with a switch to turn off the security might work for Linux and a highly technical user, but when you’ve given smartphones to a few billion people, a secure system with a switch to turn off the security is just a target for malware.
One of the things I found very frustrating about this article is that it fails to remember the actual history: when the iPhone first came out, jailbreaks were plentiful and powerful... the iPhone tried to be a closed and locked down platform, but failed due to the almost continual existence of serious security flaws that allowed for 0-day drops of exploits with almost every new device release (which coincided with every new major iOS release).
This means that we can actually look back at the history of the iPhone and answer the question "could the iPhone have been as successful as it was if there had been a switch that allowed users to opt out of Apple's complete control of not only whose apps could be installed, but further what kind of software could be installed (to let you install things like daemons or extensions to existing apps)" and the answer is "apparently, it could, because it did".
In fact, it is the opposite question that we can't easily answer: "would the iPhone have been as successful as it was without the ability to opt out of Apple's closed ecosystem?"... and this is a question where the answer is not at all obvious: for many many years the iPhone very poorly satisfied the needs of users in many countries, and jailbreaking filled the gap. Apple didn't get around to having a good Chinese keyboard until iOS 5 or 6 or so, and so Baidu maintained one and seriously encouraged users of their search engine to jailbreak from their landing page. Meanwhile, the feature set was in some real sense anemic, and jailbreaking also filled that gap: as a trivial example, Steve Jobs seemed very anti-wallpaper, a feature which didn't appear until iOS 4... the number of people who jailbroke just to install wallpaper was incredible ;P.
And honestly, I think Apple sort of knew that: I had always gotten the distinct impression that they considered the bugs used by people who jailbroke to be pretty low priority, and they would sometimes remain unfixed for months on end. At some point, the iPhone started to get "good enough" by default, and it was only then that Apple really started to turn down the screws, deciding to fix bugs quickly and even hire jailbreakers who never believed in the cause--those who were willing to play the game as a mercenary for hire--to defend the platform instead of being on the offensive. Today, jailbreaking thereby feels like a niche ecosystem, but it mattered for at least half the history of the iPhone, with something like 12% of users being jailbroken (it would quickly fall a bit on new firmware releases and then rise back up).
The reality is that innovation happens on platforms because of the ability for people to make modifications and enhancements without having to wait for the platform vendor: if iOS had succeeded in truly being a closed ecosystem, Baidu would not have been able to build custom keyboards to support Chinese users as Apple didn't get around to supporting third-party custom keyboards until iOS 8. Open platforms thereby get new features faster and can support the needs of many more users from any number of market subsets. Yes: it is the case that a closed system can sort of try to satisfy the needs of at least most people, but you don't get there overnight, and even coming up with sane extensibility hooks takes time. The real experiment has thus only recently begun: can a platform where only a single company can decide how to deploy new features continue to maintain its relevance going forward?
Totally agreed! I, for one, wouldn't have gotten into iOS at all if it wasn't for jailbreak, and I was jailbreaking peoples iPhone and iTouches in way back in elementary school, so I guess I have to thank you for that! I think a way to bridge the gap is to sell both a locked down and an unlocked iPhone, and allow users to go to an Apple Store to unlock their phones. That way, casual users won't risk unlocking their phones without knowing what they're getting into.
LG does a similar thing with factory unlocked phones - you can contact their support, agree to a disclaimer, and get a bootloader unlock, if you are in Europe or the Middle East.
I genuinely don't understand this argument. The fact that a platform succeeded despite security holes is not an argument against removing those holes. You might as well say that the malware explosion on Windows wasn't a problem because Windows still did well.
> I genuinely don't understand this argument. The fact that a platform succeeded despite security holes is not an argument against removing those holes.
True enough, but you're just assuming the truth of your argument by using non-neutral words.
The fact that a platform succeeded despite security holes is not an argument against removing those holes.
The fact that a platform succeeded thanks to security holes is an argument against removing those holes.
The quoted idea you are trying to defend in your article--explicitly, forcibly, and frankly even a bit condescendingly (via "a certain type of person") :(--is that Apple having a closed ecosystem was a necessary prerequisite to the iPhone's success, that removing this aspect of the product would destroy its value, and that it takes "a certain kind of person" to believe that the success of the iPhone somehow wasn't because of this closed up shop. You are trying to make this argument from a position of strength.
However, we have the most direct evidence possible for this assertion being false: the iPhone in fact had a "switch" (in the form of exploits for security holes that were packaged up as consumer-friendly tools to "jailbreak" the device) that let users do the strongest possible variant of what anyone talks about--allowing the user complete decision making over all of the software running on the device, not merely to install some banned apps--and not only did the world not end but somehow the iPhone was still a success.
We therefore know, without any trace of doubt, because it already happened, that if Apple didn't have centralized control over an App Store--and even if users were able to opt out of the sandbox, which notably isn't actually the argument being made by Epic! that is just something you threw in for dramatic effect and yet even still ignores the history ;P--that not only wouldn't the world end from user self-inflicted malware, but that the iPhone would still have been a success, because we actually saw this play out.
Now, you can make an entirely different argument that this freedom to install software from third parties should come from something other than a "security hole": I wouldn't disagree there, and neither would Epic! However, you aren't making that argument: you are arguing that the entire concept of undermining Apple's centralized control via their App Store is itself a security flaw and that if it didn't exist would have destroyed the iPhone's ability to succeed... which again, we know--without speculation--is false.
Or you could try to make a speculative argument that maybe the iPhone could still have been a success even if it had always been a locked down and closed ecosystem the way you want. I think that would be a difficult argument, and in fact I have already provided some seeds of the opposite argument: that if the platform in fact had been locked down the way you seem to think it had been, that it might not have been as much of a success as it was. This could be a fun argument, FWIW, but it again isn't the argument you are making.
> Unfortunately, you can’t have your cake and eat it. A secure system with a switch to turn off the security might work for Linux and a highly technical user, but when you’ve given smartphones to a few billion people, a secure system with a switch to turn off the security is just a target for malware.
One of the things I found very frustrating about this article is that it fails to remember the actual history: when the iPhone first came out, jailbreaks were plentiful and powerful... the iPhone tried to be a closed and locked down platform, but failed due to the almost continual existence of serious security flaws that allowed for 0-day drops of exploits with almost every new device release (which coincided with every new major iOS release).
This means that we can actually look back at the history of the iPhone and answer the question "could the iPhone have been as successful as it was if there had been a switch that allowed users to opt out of Apple's complete control of not only whose apps could be installed, but further what kind of software could be installed (to let you install things like daemons or extensions to existing apps)" and the answer is "apparently, it could, because it did".
In fact, it is the opposite question that we can't easily answer: "would the iPhone have been as successful as it was without the ability to opt out of Apple's closed ecosystem?"... and this is a question where the answer is not at all obvious: for many many years the iPhone very poorly satisfied the needs of users in many countries, and jailbreaking filled the gap. Apple didn't get around to having a good Chinese keyboard until iOS 5 or 6 or so, and so Baidu maintained one and seriously encouraged users of their search engine to jailbreak from their landing page. Meanwhile, the feature set was in some real sense anemic, and jailbreaking also filled that gap: as a trivial example, Steve Jobs seemed very anti-wallpaper, a feature which didn't appear until iOS 4... the number of people who jailbroke just to install wallpaper was incredible ;P.
And honestly, I think Apple sort of knew that: I had always gotten the distinct impression that they considered the bugs used by people who jailbroke to be pretty low priority, and they would sometimes remain unfixed for months on end. At some point, the iPhone started to get "good enough" by default, and it was only then that Apple really started to turn down the screws, deciding to fix bugs quickly and even hire jailbreakers who never believed in the cause--those who were willing to play the game as a mercenary for hire--to defend the platform instead of being on the offensive. Today, jailbreaking thereby feels like a niche ecosystem, but it mattered for at least half the history of the iPhone, with something like 12% of users being jailbroken (it would quickly fall a bit on new firmware releases and then rise back up).
The reality is that innovation happens on platforms because of the ability for people to make modifications and enhancements without having to wait for the platform vendor: if iOS had succeeded in truly being a closed ecosystem, Baidu would not have been able to build custom keyboards to support Chinese users as Apple didn't get around to supporting third-party custom keyboards until iOS 8. Open platforms thereby get new features faster and can support the needs of many more users from any number of market subsets. Yes: it is the case that a closed system can sort of try to satisfy the needs of at least most people, but you don't get there overnight, and even coming up with sane extensibility hooks takes time. The real experiment has thus only recently begun: can a platform where only a single company can decide how to deploy new features continue to maintain its relevance going forward?