It’s not a popular opinion around here, but the reason I like my iPhone is _because_ it’s a walled garden. It just works, reliably, without surprises, for years on end.
That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.
This however isn't a reason for the rest of the world to accept this. And since the power in the market is highly concentrated and all of it is moving more and more in this direction, regulation enforces these alternative options now.
All this does is regulate the power the provider of a product has over their customer. This does not ruin the walled garden for the people who prefer to stay in it for peace of mind, but it adds a door for the people who want to leave. There is no negative side-effects for the people staying, only the platform providers will have to spend some money and lose some revenue.
That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.
I agree in principle, but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)
Or course, this is mostly a result of Apple being greedy. If they had acted like a good steward of the platform rather than trying to extract a lot of money from developers, we probably wouldn't be here.
Then don't use this particular app? This already exists today: A lot of apps are android-only, or jailbreak-only. In the same sense, tomorrow we'll likely have amazon-store-only apps.
In practice I doubt many apps will use a third-party appstore. Apple has a lot of leeway in how they will implement the regulation - they can make it painful enough to use a third-party store that most popular apps will want to keep using the primary app store to get maximum reach. Just like how almost every android app is on the google play store - despite sideloading being a thing since forever.
Yeah, but for the apps that are on iOS devices, Apple is effectively currently standing in the position of "the lawyer who writes a 4000 page contract to de-risk the wish they're making with the evil wish-granting genie", so that we don't have to. Apple forces apps on their store to obey certain restrictions that make life better (less tracked, especially) for consumers; and those restrictions are begrudgingly accepted by the developers, because there's no other way for the dev to access the iOS user-base.
As soon as those devs can avoid Apple's restrictions and deliver their apps directly to users with the "intended" experience, they will.
Personally, I like neutered-evil-genie apps, and will be sad to lose them (i.e. have them turn into unfettered-evil-genie apps, which I won't use.)
Isn't the answer for Apple to provide operating-system level restrictions to apps (regardless of source) that make it so the only way any application on the system can access the identifier is by permission from the user? I wouldn't be surprised if this is how it works right now anyway, just because an app is deployed by an enterprise developer doesn't mean it should be able to bypass the app tracking transparency prompt.
Or does the EU law prevent them from having private APIs/system components period? It seems like many people are making the assumption that this means that every single sideloaded app will be able to bypass all of the privacy/security features on the device, and I don't see why that would be. My understanding is that this is for "fairness", which would mean that apps that are sideloaded would have the same level of access as those on the App Store, meaning they use the same APIs that trigger the same prompts.
No, because this isn't about OS-level identifiers; it's about things like e.g. applications working together to track you by passing permacookies through Shared Containers; or about apps that ask for microphone privileges then listening for ultrasound beacons in retail stores to determine their location.
These are the sorts of prohibited behaviors that can be heuristically recognized by technical means (e.g. static analysis), but where any such recognition would necessarily result result in tons of false positives; and so those issues, when raised, must be passed to a team of human auditors for determination.
This is, by-and-large, why App Store submissions — even for updates — still require that human-auditor step. They're always watching for those seemingly-minor "this app got sold to someone evil" updates that slip in spyware — the kind you see often with Chrome Extensions.
Your point is valid, but I think those examples are fixable. Permacookies could be fixed as simply as "Would you like to allow {EvilApp} to access data from {EvilPartnerApp}?", as there aren't a lot of reasons that apps should be passing data between each other without user consent (or the share sheet).
The second example has already been fixed with the microphone indicator from 1-2 versions back, where a light shows up in the corner whenever the microphone has been activated (and swiping down tells you what app activated it). A notification could be added if an app tried to activate the microphone when it wasn't in the foreground (but I don't think the OS lets you do that anyway?)
One other obvious "Turing-hard" spyware side-channel, is that it's basically up to the application developer to come up with a list of Internet domains it should be able to connect to, to put into the app's entitlements; and it's up to humans at Apple to determine whether that list is sane — often by starting up the app with syscalls to the network stack shimmed/traced, doing packet captures, and seeing what the app says to each of the domains it lists itself as entitled to talk to.
You'd think that maybe restricting connections to e.g. domains that are rooted in a zone the developer has proven ownership of, would be fine... but there are third-party advertising, analytics, and fingerprinting services that allow you to CNAME them as subdomains of your domain to evade ad-blocker signature recognition.
And, of course, no user could ever be expected to figure any of this out if asked in a prompt. "Example App is asking me to allow it to connect to abcdefg.example.com? Well, they own that, don't they? Why wouldn't I allow that?"
Asking the user sucks. All it does is train users to click yes without thinking about it because they just want to get on with their life. (See: The ubiquitous GDPR cookie prompts).
ANY "solution" that puts more burden on the user isn't.
They could just ask once for defaults not every time and have a per app dialog where the user could tweak the permissions, like browsers do. For instance I have almost everything blocked in the browser: camera, location etc.
They do it for location access, calendar access, notification access, and clipboard access for every app. Access to shared containers shouldn’t be a common occurrence outside of once when the app is set up.
You didn’t disprove what your parent said. People still just tap yes on them. I ran an experiment and put little snitch on my wife’s laptop. She just clicked “accept” every time it popped up without question.
People always make this argument in these kinds of threads and I wonder how it isn't blatantly obvious that operating-system level restrictions are woefully inadequate to deal with unscrupulous developers. Put yourself in the mindset of an unscrupulous developer for a moment, can't you think of a hundred ways to abuse permissions granted by the user or operating system to violate privacy?
> If these abuses happen under the aegis of the current App Store, doesn't that nullify the argument that App Store review is sufficient protection?
Not at all. App Store review is not perfect and no one expects it to be. That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get rid of it entirely. Otherwise you could make the same argument about any system involving unscrupulous actors: "people still kill despite there being laws against murder, doesn't that mean the law is pointless?"
> This also ignores that it's conceivable that Apple can harden iOS's existing permissions system.
Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue I linked above.
> App Store review is not perfect and no one expects it to be.
But Apple is clearly presenting it as such.
> That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get rid of it entirely.
That is correct, but right now it is the only game in town. There's no secondary stores that present it with competition. Already we read about top-10 grossing apps that are actually scammy. Perhaps Apple will strengthen its App Store when presented with alternatives.
> Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue I linked above.
It really depends on what mechanism that Uber is using to bypass the notifications systems. But off the bat, iOS could force even more granular alerts to the user when sensitive permissions are required.
Curious too, how you think that App Store review currently solves this issue. Uber is already too significant to the platform for Apple to do much more than give them a slap on the wrist, as seen historically.
> But off the bat, iOS could force even more granular alerts to the user when sensitive permissions are required.
How does having more granular alerts actually solve this issue?
> Curious too, how you think that App Store review currently solves this issue.
Well, obviously it doesn't, currently. App Store review needs to update their rules to address this type of abuse. Uber is big but they've taken hard line stances against bigger apps before (e.g. Facebook).
I don't think it's a rules update thing. It's more like review didn't uncover this behavior. (In the past Uber had gone all the way to use geofencing to evade reviewers and regulators.) Maybe this could've been only uncovered through long-term testing by reviewers who actively use the app day to day. Maybe they need such a process that does that.
> Sounds like a success story, imagine the alternative scenario where there was no review process and Uber could get away with this entirely.
It'd say 60-40. The 40% downside is that Apple deigned to go through with actually pulling Uber from the store, even just for a few days. Do you think they'd do anything even remotely similar over the notifications permission leak you cited?
> How does having more granular alerts actually solve this issue?
More restrictive and more transparent handling of permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber bundling some sort of library that led to permissions leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being triggered.
> More restrictive and more transparent handling of permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber bundling some sort of library that led to permissions leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being triggered.
I don't think you've thought this all the way through. Once a user grants me permission to send them push notifications because they want to know when their ride shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads through the same channel.
Then it sounds like we have found ourselves a problem that is unsolvable both by OS-level protections and App Store review restrictions, and perhaps we should look beyond to other ways to rein in Uber.
> Once a user grants me permission to send them push notifications because they want to know when their ride shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads through the same channel.
Wait, can't an improvement upon the OS be to make it more granular so that Uber is forced to establish separate permissions channels for rides (vital) vs. ads (not-so-vital), and that every time a notification of a certain type appears, the user is given the option to mute that channel entirely?
Sure, you can offer me different notification channels for rides vs ads. But remember, I am an unscrupulous developer. How are you going to stop me from sending you ads through the rides channel?
My underlying point, of course, is just because the operating system provides certain APIs, does not mean they are going to be used in good faith.
What I mean is if a notification presents itself, allow the user to mute it. If that channel was intended for rides, then the unscrupulous developer simply disables their own app.
Fight the good fight, this is all valid concerns, I don’t look forward to the Netflix store to download Netflix, the Spotify store to download a Spotify, etc
Both Netflix and Spotify are having mounting problems with user retention and growth. Pulling their apps off of the official, most highly-trafficked, App Store is literally suicide for them. Not to mention the inherent difficulty of creating and maintaining their own app stores, of which trying to convince users to sign up for would be a hurdle on its own.
Perhaps they could team up with Facebook and create a rival app store of those who don’t want to pay the 30% tax. Of which they can all hemorrhage users together- it should be noted that FB is also having issues maintaining and growing DAU.
Many of the restrictions that Apple added along the years were reactions to abuse by app developers (which in reality nowadays are "legal malware developers"). Everything you can think of has been tried: from reading the installed list of apps, spying on the clipboard, scraping location data from pictures, fingerprinting phones based on camera sensor or motion sensor and many others.
Permissions represent one of two pillars of their strategy against legal malware developers. The second one is the rulebook associated with the AppStore, preventing publishing non-compliant apps and banning developers for breaking said rules. A classic example is Facebook misusing enterprise certificates to install "Facebook research" which allowed them almost unrestricted access to the data of the users. Apple revoked their enterprise certificate, which also affected internal applications that Facebook employees were using. Facebook relented.
If Facebook launches their own app store, the second pillar is completely circumvented. Additionally they will find ways around the technical limitations, be it through use of private APIs, tricking users into clicking confirmations or bribing them. Technical limitations are not enough when dealing with malicious actors.
> If Facebook launches their own app store, the second pillar is completely circumvented
Meta be forced to offer their adware/spyware Facebook app through the Apple app store as well, as many people will not agree or won't have the technical knowledge to install more than one alternative app store. Apple will probably be forced to provide a list of alphabetically ordered app stores to choose from in the initial iPhone setup. It's quite convenient that their own app store starts with an A.
> that make it so the only way any application on the system can access the identifier is by permission from the user?
And let's say the user says No. Today the app will be forced to work without it. By Apple Store rules. Tomorrow the app will say "this permission is required for app to work".
When we tried to restrict cookie tracking via voluntary consent, every site installed an cookie consent overlay, where agreeing to cookies is one click, not agreeing is seventy-eight clicks.
Almost every site I've had this pop-up on required no more than 2-5 clicks -> manage cookie options -> either select ok because everything but 'required' is already off or deselect a couple of options then ok. That's easy after doing it a couple of times, it's pure laziness to say that's too hard, and we should not accept that as a good excuse to remove it.
It’s easy but very annoying. Especially when you have a secure setup that randomizes identifiers or removes cookies after the session such that the next session and every session after that you get the prompt. And how many people do you think actually take the time to deselect things? Your example here is the simplest case. Many sites it’s much more than 5-7 clicks as the pop up has a tabbed interface with 10+ checkboxes per tab. What was this supposed to accomplish again? Harass users?
WhatsApp is avoidable with this same law forcing interoperability with other messaging clients. Facebook's app is avoidable with a browser and Facebook.com . Actually WhatsApp's app is avoidable in the same way.
They’re all avoidable by just not using them. Use that fancy text message feature of your phone to communicate. 30 years ago these apps didn’t exist and people somehow continued to exist without them.
Because everybody needs their conversations encrypted. What was that liberal saying, what are you hiding? Most people are not targeted by some state actor
Not selling anything here considering every reasonable solution to this problem is something offered for free, or can be mitigated by a user with FOSS.
Yea totally normal for a majority to use SMS in my country when both platforms send messages through their own encrypted servers. I don’t have this problem, nobody in my family does, so now explain to me why I should use matrix?
The obvious counterargument here is that having lawyers write 4000 page de-risked evil genie wishes just normalized the concept of dealing with evil genies. Apple can negotiate around the margins - maybe they stop making their ad tracking identifier opt-out or something. And indeed, that seems good, we increased privacy compared to the alternative. However, this isn't the full picture. Apple is the one who provided that ad tracking identifier in the first place. More generally, they brought a lot of users straight into Facebook's open, gaping maw.
Furthermore, the lawyer isn't just de-risking one evil genie wish, they're de-risking millions of them. Apple does not just have Facebook on the App Store. They have millions of apps. And as you can imagine, many of them are barely reviewed garbage or outright scams. If these apps tried to get distributed outside of the App Store, nobody would trust them. But them being on the App Store gives users a false sense of security. Apple switched from being highly selective in the early days of iOS to doing bare-minimum checks because the latter made them more money.
The issue is what if you have to use a specific app to access some service or community. And then that app requesting access to your location data and your address book even though there is no point in it requesting either. Sure you can deny but if you do it, the app will refuse service. It can only be solved by the app store requiring that users denying access won't result in the app refusing to work, or only the features will refuse to work that actually need that data.
"just don't install the app" won't work in many, many cases.
But this doesn't really happen on Android now. Even though I can sideload apps and use different app stores, my bank never told me to get their app from Shady Store and the public transport company didn't ask me to you F-Droid. The official app store is still _the_ place you find apps in, you're just _also_ free to wander on your on.
The most famous example of an app choosing not to be on the play store is Fortnite. Google even had to add a feature to their play store search to show a message that Fortnite is not available, so that people don't get desperate and install one of the many scams. Fortnite did this because they didn't want to pay the Google tax, but other apps might do it because they want to spy on users more. The danger exists.
We can always use Apple's favorite defense on why they don't have an app store monopoly: use your browser. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. all still work via the browser. I don't know a single one that doesn't (though I could be wrong)
> The issue is what if you have to use a specific app to access some service or community.
Such compulsions are the real problem. In a free society, nobody should be compelled to have a phone at all, let alone install software on one. Government services in particular should never be gated in this way. If no compulsion exists, then there is no problem with people having the choice to use any appstore they wish.
If by 'have to' you mean something along the lines of "My brother keeps badgering me to install WhatsApp" then the answer is to simply say "No." Real example. He texts me instead.
It's thankfully not mandated by governments. However, often there is social pressure to obtain a given app. E.g. when a friend group is all on snapchat and they organize outings via the group chat. Do you want to be left out of that discussion and only be informed by one person from that group who forwards the decision when and where to go to you?
In US I have not seen any government services that are available only via mobile devices. Most online government services are accessible via a website, and one can go to a public library to use a (non-mobile) computer there.
The app might be able to detect the pattern generated by the fake data generator and refuse to work in that instance. E.g. apple's approximate location feature often puts you into the city center at a very specific location. It's trivial to detect devices that are always at that precise location and only move around in discrete steps between those points.
This can lead to an arms race where the OS creates increasingly advanced/realistic fake data, and apps get increasingly sophisticated logic.
So I'm not a fan of solving this the technical way. A policy is way better, but you need to be able to enforce it.
Sure, it'll lead to arms race like you describe on one side, but let's say 99% of the apps won't even engage in that arms race if the fake data is generic enough to cause a high number of false positives (blocking someone who's not actually faking the data).
Then, we can focus on the remaining 1% of worst offenders to actually enforce the policy.
Ultimately I think the only person this benefits is Tim Sweeney, as he gets the Epic store on iOS/Android/Playstation/Xbox.
Realistically this just drives people into a different walled garden. One that is device-vendor agnostic, but a walled garden nonetheless - in that your purchases are tied to Epic. This law could have been so much better, but now it just trades one problem for a bunch of new ones (some even worse than what it's trying to solve).
One thing that might have been nice - making allowances in the law for centralised certification authorities with fixed tariffs, so that Apple still checks the builds as it does now for the App Store, but then the builds can be released elsewhere (as the signatures will match). For this they could charge a fee, which could be capped in the law at a percentage of the sale price (and obviously much lower than 30%). This way iOS/Android could still have guaranteed protection, for which Apple/Google's costs are covered, but the user would have freedom to get their software from wherever.
The problem is that hardline free software advocates would still complain about this, insisting that the certification authority be scrapped. iOS and Android are now Windows, and it's going to be a mess.
You underestimate the blessing that is an app store that's free of bullshit policies restricting what you can and cannot publish. With F-Droid on Android, I used to have access to apps like NewPipe that Google would never even consider carrying on their app store, but - because I had a third party store, that wasn't a problem.
Now that I have an iPhone, I miss NewPipe greatly. But with this law, I might be able to get something like it in a few months without jailbreaking.
Not underestimating it at all, it has value. Unfortunately it undermines so much of the security model in other areas that both platforms will rapidly become malware swamps.
if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust
This will be a problem but the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple and just let them decide which third party apps you are allowed to use.
In some cases that will mean making a hard choice between accepting the risk of using the third party app store, or accepting that you won't be able to use certain apps. The benefits are significant though - your device will actually be under your control. You will be able to do all the things Apple prevent now.
> ...the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple and just let them decide...
Very good point. It's almost like people believing it to be better for a "benevolent" dictator to make all decisions, so that they won't be bothered with having to make choices.
Not every user wants to give over their freedom of choice to Apple (or any seemingly "kind" dictator), and many would prefer they can make decisions about what is best for their particular situation and based on their own preferences.
> This will be a problem but the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple
Will the solution involve a method to negotiate degrees-of-freedom? Or perhaps a freedom grant method with revocation protocol? Do I get a little widget to see how free I am at the moment?
I'd love to see a laundry list of changes to industry practice, too. But the language employed for these compatibility fights is just getting goofy.
The F150 cup holder is enslaving me, somebody pass a law quick!
> In some cases that will mean making a hard choice between accepting the risk of using the third party app store, or accepting that you won't be able to use certain apps.
You already have that choice today: I can buy into the walled-garden, or go to Android and side-load to my heart's content.
Clearly the market has chosen the preferred route. (I personally am also in the camp of preferring the simple, locked-down approach for my family that Apple has created.)
> You already have that choice today: I can buy into the walled-garden, or go to Android and side-load to my heart's content.
So if Google decided to force this policy onto Android phones, you would support the EU introducing this legislation to bring back the option of side-loading?
Or would you want the legislation to only apply to Android phones, and not Apple devices?
> you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)
As apposed to today where you can’t get it at all if apple and the app disagree about anything?
I know you are thinking of another large enough player you don’t trust as much forcing their store as the only avenue for an app, but it’s hard to imagine how that wouldn’t provide large incentives for a smaller party to make a competitor on the official store.
As apposed to today where you can’t get it at all if apple and the app disagree about anything?
Since there is only one app store for iPhones, almost every app vendor is willing to conform to Apple's guidelines (which are often pro-privacy and protect the user). Otherwise they lose out on a significant market share with a lot of spending power.
smaller party to make a competitor on the official store
Sure, they will pop up. But Facebook, Microsoft, and Google will start iOS app stores and app developers will go to their app stores because of network effects.
> Since there is only one app store for iPhones, almost every app vendor is willing to conform to Apple's guidelines (which are often pro-privacy and protect the user). Otherwise they lose out on a significant market share with a lot of spending power.
You've just described why these changes are good. I feel like the word "willing" in your statement is carrying a lot of weight.
Apple forces developers to publish from Apple devices, spend $100 a year for a developer account, give up 15-30% of any revenue generated from that app, use WebKit, etc.
That is not at all what I describe as restrictions that lead to "willing" app vendors.
This doesn't happen on Android, so don't worry too much about it. I can bet my 2 cents on that 99% of users will only use app stores even after this regulation and Apple has a power to make it happen. Of course Apple will need to spend some of its energy on suppressing real competition but that's not what customers need to worry about...
Any of this is already possible on MacOS, Windows, and Android. It's not actually so wild as you're making it out to be. Just ignore the software merchants you don't want to affiliate with. I don't like Valve, so I don't install their 'appstore' Steam. That means I can't buy games that are only sold on Steam. Big whoop, it's a consequence I accept of a decision I am free to make or reconsider. Life goes on.
Yeah, even the ones run by major tech players- the Amazon and Samsung Android app stores, are really just there to serve their own devices. They don't contain any exclusive apps that are forcing Android users off of the Play Store for.
>I agree in principle, but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)
You have Android as a real world experiment, go ask an Android users to search the Facebook Messenger app on Google Play store and you will see it is there, FB did not forced Android users to install the app by side loading it and FB did not created their own app store for their apps.
What could happen though is you would get fair prices, say an app/Game would be 30% cheaper if you buy it directly from the developer and not from an intermediary, though I did not see this happening on PC (getting a better deal if I buy directly, I am wondering what causes this)
We did not see this as being in an app store actually has value: these 30% cover server/traffic for downloading, billing, discoverability, ease of use in getting the app, little marketing (getting featured). For lots of developers, this seems to be worth whatever the market in question asks for.
I have never needed to install an app from Facebook, and never have. Amazon has an appstore; I have never been forced to install it or anything from it. Should the day come when people are actually forced to use any facebook app or appstore, that compulsion is the problem that needs to be corrected. The problem isn't having the option to install a facebook app; the compulsion is the problem.
> but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust
I often hear this argument but Android has had third-party app-stores and 'side-loadable apps' since day one and I can't think of a single major app that needs its own app-store.
> I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust.
This works both ways. Some people want to use iOS exclusive apps but can't justify buying an iPhone because of how restrictive it is. This act alleviates that.
- Third-parry app stores exist, the app in question is available on one of them. You have a choice: install it, or ignore it and stay fully under Apple's aegis, as before.
- The app in question does not exist because the only existing app store run by Apple rejects it. Tough luck, no choice, but you still can stay safe.
Don't you agree that the latter situation is a strict subset of the former?
Also, if I were Apple, I would implement a one-click return to "safe defaults", and a prominent badge to tell Apple's software and setting from third-party.
Don't quote me on this, but there was some discussions early this year about dominant platforms (I didn't read what does cover this Act, but) need to provide API to allow users to use third party alternatives, like Facebook, WhatsApp, iMessage, etc, so you could now have an app like Adium again where you have all your chats. So in theory this will be not an issue.
I think you missed the point of the new restrictions. Stopping those practices that are harmful to users is a good thing. Ending endless spying, aka corporate surveillance, that can be a good thing. When Apple made their changes, Apple conceptually blocked any new facebook app that spys on you, because you can't install it. If there's a future facebook store that has the only facebook app (because facebook won't agree to that more limited apple ad/surveillance world capability), you'd have freedom to install that app because of european rules described here - but you wouldn't necessarily be better off by having more spying.
European (and other) regulators are concerned about tech data collection. It’s an issue that’s not necessarily orthogonal to this development. If Meta wanted to try their luck at putting their apps on an exclusive Facebook app store, such a platform would be subject to regulator scrutiny as well, and would be an even more convenient target for investigation.
You can't believe how jolting people and/or companies make them change for the better. Maybe this is the kick we needed for the companies to start innovating and "Think Different"?
I use MacBooks and iPhone, and I love their current form, but they are victim of their own success at one point, like how Intel just dragged its feet to just keep the performance gap enough to keep the lead. Maybe this can help us to see a better, more exciting Apple and tech ecosystem, no?
The last battery lawsuit brought us "Battery health" menu, and this is immensely useful, even if it only reads a couple flags and shows us what the iOS is doing.
> if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust
This sounds like iPhone user argument.
In Android world you can have multiple app stores, but if you want your app to be used you must be on Google one, because it has the most eyes.
Facebook didn't create their own app store.
Custom App stores are fringe apps, with exceptions of f-droid which is source of open source apps and many prefer it to google play (and apps are frequently on both stores) and maybe samsung/amazon ones because they are preinstalled on some devices.
>Or course, this is mostly a result of Apple being greedy. If they had acted like a good steward of the platform rather than trying to extract a lot of money from developers, we probably wouldn't be here
I don't think so. Another comment was mentioning how some desktop apps are built to install ONLY from a certain marketplace (eg Steam) so you can't install them from anywhere else. It could easily happen on iOS.
This will immediately happen, and is the intent of the law.
Direct downloads from websites isn't far off - I wouldn't be surprised if we very rapidly get to a place of each-app-is-it's-own-store for the purposes of complying with the law so you can freely download apps from websites.
It'll be Windows all over again, with all that implies.
> That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.
That’s actually not possible though. For instance, Microsoft is likely to create its own app store, as is Adobe, Google, and obviously Epic, among the many others. So now I will have to install a bunch of app stores just to install different softwares.
I already have this problem on my gaming PC where I not only have a bunch of different app stores, but a bunch of different update tools, payment providers, logins (not just for the games, but for the app stores). It’s a freaking pain in the butt. I just want to play a game on my PC and I have to deal with crap like that. I don’t want it on my phone!
Then maybe someone come with a platform that is agnostic. Like Humble Bundle - they offer in many cases both Steam codes AND ability to download directly from their servers with no need to install any additional platform software.
I don’t see how your walled garden is threatened by giving Melbourne Trams the ability to use the NFC chip in my phone to pay for rides. Or threatened by Amazon having the ability to add an in-app purchase button to their iPhone app which uses my saved Amazon payment options.
I’m sure apple will fight this tooth and nail, but it’s my phone. I paid for it. I want to be able to do what I want with my device.
I'm not thrilled with their having to open up most of these areas, but it's doable. If the API's don't already exist (read: Private, for Apple's use only) they can be written - that's an item on the to-do list, but it's not crazy.
However, the Apple Pay & NFC stuff just rubs me the wrong way. The only reason they have been begging for this is the ability to collect more data about riders, which isn't necessary and probably would get sold to third parties for the purpose of serving ads and other services.
I want none of this and those firms can kindly fuck off right into the Sun.
Existing API's do the basics just fine.
Thank $deity the MTA didn't entertain any of this bullshit when they rolled out OMNY. Now if we could get NJTransit on board, we'd be all set.
I'd welcome a return to transit tokens. They were simple and easy to use, and could be easily shared with guests visiting town. And they couldn't be used to track anybody.
In Chicago you can put your metro card in your apple wallet and it’ll automatically use it on the public transit system even if you have a different default set. Not sure if apple is charging them fees or what, but it works pretty well for me.
IIRC, those fees are charged to the merchant in order to process transactions. Traditional credit cards are similar in theory. For example, American Express has long had the reputation that in addition to the cards people know (Green, Gold, Platinum, etc.) technically being "charge cards" that need to be paid in full each cycle, merchants pay a higher fee to accept them.
^ Offset of course by the fact that most customers have pretty good credit to begin with and probably spend more than your average Visa or Mastercard.
In addition, I would also expect them to be paying for integration into someone's payment infrastructure to provide other services - PayPal, Stripe, Square, and the like.
The whole point of an NFC chip is to allow this sort of thing. I don't see how anyone can think it's a good idea to make Apple entitled to set arbitrary payment processing fees for all NFC payments on an Apple device.
It’s their platform. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.
I’m not opposed to regulations, but the EU should be careful not to be too permissive or specific, keeping in mind the limitations of doing either one.
See also: the EU directive about mandating USB-C ports. They claim the standard will be revised in response to market conditions on the ground, which is nice to hear, but governments are slow - often by design - and they will need to prove it before they can be trusted not to screw up.
My phone is nobody’s platform. It’s my phone. I paid for it. I demand the right to use someone else’s software on my device if that suits me better.
It’s not like apple subsidises the devices with income from the App Store fees. They’re just double dipping, and I’m glad the EU is slapping that down.
Again, it's not a huge leap to imagine someone (in this case, banks or transit authorities) using that unfiltered access to do something gross, like giving your data to an entity you've never heard of.
Using the official API prevents most of this misbehavior, which is why it doesn't bother me if Apple are jerks about enforcing compliance.
If you, or an app you use, feel like access is necessary, make your case to them. Repeatedly if neccessary. Software is nothing if not malleable and most of these areas are slowly opening up, as the company seems to have read the room on a few things and would like to get ahead before the law requires they do so.
On the other hand, especially with hardware that could conceivably track your location, I'm surprised that users - the knowledgable ones anyway at least - aren't up in arms about what access to raw data (e.g, not mediated by an API) by someone other than the platform vendor might mean for them.
I don't think it's necessary to pull an EFF move and demand everything be private, but this is one area that I suspect would meet the standard where people want the bar to be much higher about who gets access to data and what they are allowed to use it for.
I’m sympathetic to the privacy argument. But I’m suspicious.
Particularly after reading the memos which came out in the Epic lawsuit, I can’t tell how much all of this really is about privacy. Or how much privacy is just cover to take a cut of the profits of Netflix, Amazon and visa by controlling access to our phones.
The privacy argument probably has some truth, but it seems suspiciously self serving for Apple.
I think there’s plenty of ways apple could preserve my privacy without taking such extreme control of my device. A simple answer would be to give banks direct access to the NFC chips on the condition of user privacy. And cut them off if they violate that policy rule.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that apple’s chosen solution just happens to be the one which maximises their profit.
The testimony I recall from the Epic trial was pretty clear - Cook & Co. see this as a point of differentiation that helps them sell hardware.
After all, Google can't really do the differential privacy stuff to the extent Apple does due to their reliance on ad revenue - which is only so targeted because they collect it in the first place, giving their Ads customers (businesses) more opportunities to sell to.
Netflix wants to build viewer profiles of its users, so gathering that data in a way that they can ID helps; Amazon will do similar things to suggest purchases based on your history.
As a card provider for the general public, Visa kind of has to play ball and even then, their customers are merchants and financial institutions that issue cards.
Given enough size - think FAANG, or really any financial institution - Apple probably can't reject them for shady behavior, but can always work to build guardrails to prevent the worst offenders from going off.
> Again, it's not a huge leap to imagine someone (in this case, banks or transit authorities) using that unfiltered access to do something gross, like giving your data to an entity you've never heard of.
So you would also approve government entity to control what you do in your house, just to make sure you don't do something gross? If not, why you want some private company to control a phone you bought and own?
So the OS updates each year are free labour? The constant research as well? Okay…
How about the fact that you knew about the restrictions before you bought the product?
I feel you are in the wrong here. You knew the contract conditions and still signed it but because you don’t like it you want to change it. Well I like it so why is your view stronger than mine? Keep in mind you do have the option of Android and with this law you are taking away my right to choose a completely closed garden. Something I actually enjoy - I’m not just playing devil’s advocate here
As I see it, the $1000+ I paid for my phone more than covers the cost of Apple’s R&D, and a few years of software updates. Apple’s balance sheet bears this out too.
> You knew the contract conditions and still signed it
I didn’t sign a contract. I bought something with my money. I don’t have an ongoing business relationship with apple. But apple still thinks they’re in the right to control what I do on my own hardware.
And wow do they make a lot of money inserting themselves into my financial transactions. All in the name of privacy I hear. Suuuureee.
Apple is cleverly using the iPhone as a moat to stop banks and other companies from competing with them on software for their devices. They know nobody else has the expertise and deep enough pockets to compete on hardware - and they’re using that to milk as much money through software as they can get away with. It’s just the same as what Microsoft did bundling IE with windows - except way worse because apple doesn’t even let you install anything else.
It’s a terrible deal for consumers and the EU is right to slap them down for it.
ummm?? government is slow then what is Apple? with its bs expensive cable that is like a decade behind with its USB2 speed? its 2022 every other phone has fast transfer rate
Yeah this doesn't make sense to me. I've used my iPhone with NFC to pay for transit in multiple cities in multiple countries, I don't see any reason Melbourne Trams can't implement it too.
Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to supporting non-Apple things. It will necessarily degrade certain experiences away from those that Apple would provide without the regulation.
Why do there need to be new customers? If you didn't like the product before, you can look elsewhere (or look within). Seems pretty messed up to ruin the experience for those who have been enjoying the products as is for years.
How would opening up the API and payment system ruin the product? I want to buy audible books from the audible app on my phone but I can’t do that. I want to subscribe to Netflix from my phone but I can’t.
Seems to me that opening this stuff up would make our phones better, not worse.
Ah, yes, if only Apple Computer could have borrowed the wisdom of the famously prescient and tech literate European Union, it might have seen its way to these changes and new customers alone.
Apple has a bajillion dollars and cheats their own engineers.
> Apple is the world's largest technology company by revenue, the world's largest technology company by total assets,[454] and the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung.[455][456]
> In its fiscal year ending in September 2011, Apple Inc. reported a total of $108 billion in annual revenues—a significant increase from its 2010 revenues of $65 billion—and nearly $82 billion in cash reserves.
> In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation (U.S. District Court, Northern District of California 11-cv-2509 [10]) is a class-action lawsuit on behalf of over 64,000 employees of Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm (the last two are subsidiaries of Disney) against their employer alleging that their wages were repressed due to alleged agreements between their employers not to hire employees from their competitors.[11][12] The case was filed on May 4, 2011 by a former software engineer at Lucasfilm and alleges violations of California's antitrust statute, Business and Professions Code sections 16720 et seq. (the "Cartwright Act"); Business and Professions Code section 16600; and California's unfair competition law, Business and Professions Code sections 17200, et seq. Focusing on the network of connections around former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the Complaint alleges "an interconnected web of express agreements, each with the active involvement and participation of a company under the control of Steve Jobs...and/or a company that shared at least one member of Apple's board of directors." The alleged intent of this conspiracy was "to reduce employee compensation and mobility through eliminating competition for skilled labor."
And do you really think they've "seen the light" since then?
> the entire tech industry was colluding on salary and comp?
And BTW it pretty much was the entire tech industry, it came out in the court proceedings: "Dozens" of other major tech companies were involved. Pando Daily had good reporting but they closed but you can still read up on it through the Archive.
- - - -
The OP said:
> Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to supporting non-Apple things. It will necessarily degrade certain experiences away from those that Apple would provide without the regulation.
The first point (about Apple's war chest) is that they have plenty of resources.
The second point (about how they conspired to cheat their own engineers despite having more money than Scrooge McDuck) is just to remind everyone that these are amoral money-grubbing bastards who will do pretty much anything they think they can get away with to make a buck.
The idea that opening up their walled garden to competition will "degrade certain experiences" is laughable.
I kinda get your point that Apple will have to devote some more resources, but it will only be slightly more: All the API are already there and being used by Apple apps privately and they just have to make it open to everyone. That's not really a huge overhead for someone of Apple's size - they'll just need to publish / update documentation and increase their developer support teams and that doesn't cost 10's of millions of dollars (which is again peanuts for Apple).
Private apis are nothing like public. You can’t just document them and toss em out the door because Private means you can change and break them every release without concern because you control all the consumers. You can also start using incomplete ones before the contract is solidified. Public means they are in use and shouldn’t change much, and if you do you need to announce a deprecation and then slowly deprecate. Not that apple has to do that but generally that is the rather large difference and you know the moment they break one everyone will be scream at them for that.
This is really not how it works. Private APIs are usually poorly designed for general use — safeguards for excess power consumption, etc, often don’t exist.
Many things will need to be rewritten; this legislation will result in significant delays in shipping new end-user features, if Apple doesn’t simply pull out of the EU, since the EU is demonstrating with this legislation that they don’t care about end-user privacy/security.
> This will have an extremely high cost to Apple if it’s implemented.
Come on, do you really expect us to be sympathetic to a trillion dollar company if its profit margin reduces? (Which any way may not happen - realistically, they'll just pass on the cost to us consumers).
How? If someone installs different app store and it breaks, they just don't handle the requests regarding 3rd party apps, just like now. What extra resources you're talking about
Well, as an average iPhone user, no. The reliability is mediocre.
Keyboard crashing, UI glitching and having wrong dimensions/inoperable sections, occasionally deciding that minimum brightness is the only allowed value and being entirely unresponsive to the brightness slider, some days using waaaay more battery with no battery accounting, sometimes requiring a reboot to use a Qi charger, occasionally freezing and dropping me back to the home screen after what I assume is a crash, sometimes requiring hard reboots as the UI is entirely locked up and doesn't even want to soft crash, ...
I can keep going. And yes, it's a new model that no it's not full of crap and apps. It sees light usage outside reading news sites.
The "apple is more reliable" thing is a myth. I feel that it used to be the case, but I haven't felt like that for a decade.
And no, having anecdotal good experiences is not very useful. I also have those, and so do users of every other platform. Reliability is about the bad experiences, and just works" implies none or at least very few bad experiences.
This sounds like you have a hardware or software issue on your phone. make a backup (if you aren't using icloud backups already) and then make a genius bar appt. and see if they can fix this. I have never seen that level of glitchy-ness on an iphone without there being a serious issue. either on my own phones or during nearing a decade in IT.
Yes, I have a hardware and a software issue: the root cause is that it's an iPhone running iOS as normal.
This isn't a hardware defect or a broken install. It's just mediocre software, nothing more. This isn't even that glitchy. All those things don't usually happen at once, although they are recurring - including for friends on different device generations, ruling out unlucky hardware and moon rays.
I agree with parent. You phone is broken, my friend. In the years I've been using iOS, these have happened to me less than a handful of times. Definitely not something I would ever remember if not prompted.
I'm sorry, but it's just not particularly believable that all devices in my vicinity should have rare hardware faults that cause the mentioned software crashes and glitches.
As mentioned, they are reproduced on devices of friends of different generations, and my earlier devices were no saints either.
Plus, remember the debugging manual: When software bugs out, it's safe to assume it's always the software that's broken. Suspicion of kernel, compiler or hardware faults come after the software has been proven free of fault (which you can't reasonably do without source access).
UI glitching and being stuck at minimum brightness is sometimes a sign of overheating or battery problems, and the OS applying draconic power management to compensate. Unusually high battery drain and overheating is something I once had because of a bad sim card, but YMMV. It is definitely not normal to see these problems on an iphone. I would take it in for service.
That's a fair explanation if the brightness thing, although I'm not particularly demanding of my devices. Unless my thigh was unreasonably warm, overheating would probably have to be a background service gone rogue. That one has only happened a few times though.
As for service, this is not unique to a single device. Many if the issues are seen on a newer model from a friend within a few weeks of purchase. For that to still be hardware or related to my iOS install, shipped product quality would have to be quite a lottery...
I hope you recognize that your experiences are anecdotal as well.
None of what you mentioned I even heard of, let alone experienced. Yet you come here and seem to be claiming that your anecdotal evidence weighs heavier than the anecdotal evidence of others. Weird.
It's a shame that you drew the short straw but maybe it's something in your setup, home network, mobile coverage or whatnot.
If we're going to exchange anecdotes, I can write at least 20 short horror stories of all 13 Android devices I owned over the course of 6 years, belonging to 5 different brands. They had systemic and repeatable / reproducible issues which I eventually concluded their custodians weren't interested in fixing.
I can keep going as well. None of what you said is actual evidence.
This argument keeps on popping up, but I don't really understand why. Apple themselves already have a platform that's had a reputation of reliability and "just works" that is not a walled garden in most of the ways the digital markets act intends to prevent: the Mac. There's no evidence the the qualities of Apple products are strongly linked with them being walled gardens. Your iPhone will be fine.
(Macs may not be as "just works" as iPhones, sure. I've personally seen that too many times. But computers are also intended to be more flexible and complicated in operation than smartphones, and regardless of personal anecdotes Apple is still widely regarded as building the most "just works" general purpose computers. And whatever faults Macs have, you'd be hard pressed to argue that if only the Mac was more of a walled garden that things would be better.)
Your walled garden gets better, mine (existing Apple ecosystem) gets worse. Less people -> less revenue -> less developers/features/customer support. Just want to highlight the no free lunch in this situation.
True, countless times I had to fix friends/family android tablets and phones where all of the sudden apps stopped working and will boot crash . It is always some crap like apps messing settings and permissions or play not being updated etc… I converted most of family to iPhone/iPad problem solved.
I am a tech person but when it comes to phones I want the damn thing just to work and simple to use.
And what in the new law would prevent them from continuing to make the same "reliable without surprises" iPhone experience you seemingly enjoy? I don't see anything that prevents them from saying "We can only guarantee an Apple-level experience by using apps vetted by Apple and download directly from the official Apple App Store." Most companies that I'm aware of don't have to warranty issues arising from after market/3rd party accessories. I mean, is Apple responsible if I download software from x company on my mac from x company's website? Why isn't the laptop ecosystem "all messed up" if you can install anything from anywhere on your macbook and use any payment processor? The only thing this really would do to upset Apple is taking away some of their walled-garden revenue, like processing fees. I'm not sure why a watch or phone or tablet needs to be treated opposite of other traditional computing devices. Just because it's a different form factor?
I'd argue appliances should be walled and computers shouldn't be.
I think the form factor is very relevant. A MacBook is treated like a computer. A phone is treated like an appliance.
Most phone/tablet users want the convenience of modular functionality without vetting the source. Said functionality should also be easy to discover and add/remove, hence app stores.
Whereas on a computer, app stores are ignored if they even exist. Most people install after doing their own Googling or seeing it run on another MacBook.
In my opinion phones intended for general purpose computing should have distinct marketing and different software-related features.
It's an extremely popular opinion. It's the tech grandma phenomenon. A lot of people in tech want to optimise for their grandmas. So whenever something like this is proposed, the standard response is, 'But what about my grandma ?'. It's a variation of the 'But what about the kids ?' argument.
But what about me? I’m the one who likes the fact I don’t need to worry about malware on my phone and I open sensitive documents only on my phone without any anxiety that they might get leaked.
I feel a lot of ppl in tech actually don’t care about the end user and care only about the profit they can make while completely disrespecting my privacy. How about that being the phenomenon?
I won't have when my bank decides their crappy app is better than Apple Pay, when an app I rely on decides to leave the app store, etc.
Sure, I can find another bank/app, but I use the ones I use because they have the best conditions/features/etc for me, which others may not have. Or I can't even switch, because the app in question is required for work/public transit etc.
Here in Germany, “Sparkassen” and “Volksbanken”, which together have >50% market share, both don't support Google Pay, instead providing their own (according to acquaintances using them, not that good) payment apps. They both support Apple Pay, though.
But it does .. It does happen on Android. Plenty of banks refuse to support Google Pay, and will instead leave you with their own crappy app. They all support Apple Pay though.
I'm not quite understanding this argument. If you prefer to stay behind a "walled garden", then you still can. The difference being that you will personally enforce your own preferences for all things dictated or suggested by Apple versus Apple imposing what they want upon everyone. The "walled garden" will be your own mentally imposed constraint.
Though you and various others might prefer the "walled garden", that is not to say that all Apple users prefer it that way. Clearly, as jailbreaking demonstrates, there are significant numbers of iPhone users that didn't and don't want to stay behind Apple's jail or wall.
And this law is taking away my preference. I WANT to pay through Apple, because they make it easy. Subscriptions through Apple are super easy to cancel. That will for certain be gone, because now they get away with all their shady schemes that make it close to impossible to cancel. I want to pay with Apple Pay, because it is rock solid. I don't want to be forced into the banks half-baked crap app.
There might be some apps and hardware that are desirable on the iPhone and some apps that are desirable on an android phone.
For example, I might want to use iMessage without any of the restrictions that you get on other non apple devices. This is huge, my friends all have iPhones and use iMessage. I don't want a neutered experience. What happens to family that rely on these tools, mom's that are looking into buying their child's first phone? This is how people become trapped in these ecosystems.
The camera on iPhones is really good, apps like Snapchat or Instagram have always functioned way better on iPhone than on android.
There are many reasons why someone would want to use a lot of apps developed for the iPhone. But they might also have extra needs. Personally, I do have an android phone, and besides the apps that I've installed through the playstore I have lots of alternative apps from the f droid. They're great. I have wanted to try the iPhone because I know my mainstream apps would work better in the iPhone. But alas, there are too many restrictions.
You are disrespecting the choice of iPhone owners, who want freedom of choice on a product they paid for. That's what jailbreaking was/is all about and the various App Store alternatives. It also shows a lack of understanding on the EU's position in regards to fair business practices, where Apple snuffs out any competition. Apple is not suppressing competition out of the kindness of their hearts, they did so to maximize profits off of their captive user base.
If you want to follow Apple's future suggested practices, then you will still be able to, it just won't be forcibly imposed on all users.
If I were Apple - the way I would have gone about it was to sell an open developer phone that supported changing the defaults, etc.
That way when the inevitable "Apple has been hacked and is no better than Android" media driven hit pieces come out - Apple can highlight that this is happening on the open developer phone meant for the fringe consumers, not the safe walled garden that most of us normal, non bleeding edge consumers have in our pocket.
And us folks who just want a phone that works can sigh in relief versus having to read a 1000 word article only to find its because some guy went through several hoops to install some obvious malware.
Really, Apple could have headed off regulators at the pass if they had embraced the (semi-)opening of their platform themselves. Allow third party app stores but on their own terms, providing SDKs and APIs for creating your own iOS App Store with security checks baked in and mandating privacy protections built in. Sort of like a software services equivalent to Apple Authorized Service Providers and Apple Authorized Resellers.
They would have then controlled this debate, and there would have been less room for the Epics of the world to complain about the platform being locked down. Not to mention users would benefit from greater choice. Imagine boutique third party app stores springing up devoted to specific interests and niches such as F-Droid, or promising better curation or quality.
Companies who refuse to use the AppStoreKit that Apple so beneficently provided would then be seen as malefactors seeking to subject their users to lack of privacy and security, rather than Apple trying to uphold their 30% cut and restrictive behavior.
Instead, Apple tried to control everything and not only did they expose themselves to regulation like this, they deal with customers annoyed at scammy apps on their own App Store, and third party devs crying foul at inconsistent policing.
Now that there's a way out, however, you can be forced out if e.g. you have to install an app that isn't available in the App Store because its developer saw an opportunity to roll their own.
Not saying that the trade isn't worth it, just that, well, now that Pandora's box is open, it's coming to get you, even if you don't want it to.
1. Apple won't stay competitive for its major partners in the app store.
2. The app will be really important for you with no alternatives.
3. It will be both important and won't be up to your standards established by Apple.
My suspicion is that if it provides really interesting functionality, it will have enough competition that you will be able to choose from.
The major danger comes from scams targeting uneducated users, however, if Apple really wants to protect them, it will make everything possible to maintain their app store as a viable distribution channel.
> My suspicion is that if it provides really interesting functionality, it will have enough competition that you will be able to choose from.
I'm thinking of scenarios where you don't specifically want the app, nor does it offer any particularly interesting functionality - it's just a platform lock-in effect.
As a trivial instance, you can't install Fortnite on Windows machines without going through the Epic Store. Yet, the value of Fortnite isn't how the game plays, but the skins & community - things that cannot be replicated by another app.
> Now that there's a way out, however, you can be forced out if e.g. you have to install an app that isn't available in the App Store because its developer saw an opportunity to roll their own.
This is something iPhone uses use all the time and this did not happen on Android.
At first I thought you had missed a word or two ("don't install anything unapproved by Apple"?), but then I decided this was deliberate as you're making a reference to Adam and Eve.
I too enjoy having an extra layer of protection from the companies writing apps. (And the companies providing libraries to them, like Facebook.) And for my own stuff, the sandboxing gives me a layer of protection from vulnerabilities in the libraries that I use.
I think being able to side-load stuff, while keeping the sandboxing (and requiring user permission for access to data) in place would be ideal for me. This makes it a bit easier to write stuff for the device and distribute ad-hoc to friends and family stuff that is of no interest to the general public.
I don't have a strong interest in alternative browsers, because I don't believe any of the developers of alternative browsers will prioritize battery life. But I know others have strong feelings about that.
The idea of this is great in theory. But since when have third party companies ever acted for the benefit of the user. This is one of those cases where I felt like Apple benefiting also benefited me as a user.
Epic is a fantastic example that went to great lengths to not use the App Store for Fortnite.
I worry that allowing this will make it so more developers use third party billing (and dark patterns for canceling), third party app stores that may do shady things, or just distributing packages directly.
Sure you can make the argument that I can just not download those apps, but once a company realizes they can abuse their customers by not needing to conform to the rules that Apple sets. Why would continue to be on the App Store?
I am watching this very carefully, but I worry that as a consumer I will loose one of the key reasons I use an iPhone.
Interesting why, the name Hacker News implies being able to hack around even (or espacially, this is basically a supercomputer most of us carry around all the time) with your phone.
Not if players like epic games don’t support Apple Pay (with east cancellation). Don’t support the app stores rules and are only found in 3rd party apo stores..etc.
It’ll turn the iPhone into an android. Which sucks as I left android because I enjoyed the walled garden.
There are countless ways one can be forced to use an app. My employer could require it. My bank could switch to their own system from Apple Pay. The public transport in my region could roll their own tracking ticket system instead of using Apple Pay. An app leaving the App Store could just have no viable alternative. Etc.
what is in the walled garden is decided by apple, and they do not have your best interests in mind.
For example - any app you install has unfettered network access.
what/who the app is connecting to, and what is being sent back and forth is opaque to you.
deep linking allows apps to intercept url references external to the app.
privacy policies are documents that live on a web server and can change at any time. And app updates can silently change the behavior of the apps as well.
It's all a mess, but because there are nice fonts and the icons have rounded corners people are subtly influenced to think it is well organized, maintained and modern.
I agree 100%. While I personally would love all these features as a tinkerer, I'm afraid my retiree parents are gonna click on malicious links and install malware. Because this is what they fall for on Windows and Android.
Then the solution will be to use anti viruses and other software, which will make the ecosystem even more exploitative (imagine the likes of Norton and Avast on your phone).
I believe the best solution is giving the user a choice of the OS. Like go to a store, select phone hardware, select OS and pay. Once you're on an OS you play by the OS' rules. Like for android you could choose vanilla, Samsung distro, Mi distro, etc. Similarly iOS could be available on Pixel hardware, etc.
That's not the only reason to get an iPhone though, and why should you get this at the expense of the rest of iPhone buyers? The iPhone is hardware, not software
