Shuffling through my 70's here. It's still mind blowing to be able to build stuff that would take orders of magnitude more time and effort otherwise but today's AI is still an idiot savant though the ratio of savant to idiot continues to improve. Since good prompting/specing is the key to success, the most disappointing aspect of today's AI is its inability to be a better brainstorming design partner where the limitation is how utterly pedestrian the AI's contributions typically are.
Google's point about iMessage is that Apple shouldn't be promoting and profiting from kids bullying each-other. The article's author has a brand he's selling as someone on the Android beat who's willing to poke Google. Google is also making the case that since iMessage bootstrapped itself on SMS/MMS, perhaps it should continue to embrace the updated versions of these standards, enabling encrypted messaging with Android users.
Apple does not actually "take a hard stance on all apps to make sure they're not abusing privileges" though they say that they do in their advertising.
I see plenty of complaints from devs about Apple dropping their app because it runs unverified code, and that’s enough for me to know that the system is working.
If you read HN regularly you also know the app store has a huge share of scam apps that Apple has been made aware of multiple times and that perfectly legitimate apps gets removed for strange and suspect reasons (like because Apple is making a competing app for example).
Earth's population shouldn't be forced to do something for your sake. If you have a problem like what you mention with your job, solving it for yourself is much better than wanting to force something on everyone. It's very egotistical to even think that another person shouldn't be able to sideload apps because you have a shitty boss or job.
Given how Apple allows side-loading on Mac and obviously the 2 other dominant consumer platforms (Android & Windows) do as well with no significant consequences, it's pretty disingenuous for Apple to engage in these privacy/security scare tactics to maintain platform control and profits.
Add to this the fact that they only really started this campaign more than a decade after they launched the iPhone just compounds Apple's loss of credibility on this.
Bryan Lunduke recently made some good points about sideloading[1,2].
It's difficult to rationalize Apple's stance on this as anything but anti-competitive. They invented a new term they can use in their scare tactics that would obscure their goal of being the only company to profit from software sales on their platform.
Apple loves to market the iPad as the "modern computer", yet the ecosystem is so controlled and locked down that it can barely function as anything other than a media consumption device.
> Apple loves to market the iPad as the "modern computer", yet the ecosystem is so controlled and locked down that it can barely function as anything other than a media consumption device.
The iPad is an incredible device for creating digital art (Procreate + Apple Pencil) and electronic music (Korg Gadget and literally hundreds of great synth, DAW, and effect apps.)
That's pretty much the only productive work you can do with it. And even that is crippled. Can you export the files you create to an external hard drive and import it on a PC? Can you hook up an external monitor that doesn't just mirror the iPad display? A real Photoshop port has been promised for years and is still not available. I would like to do some real programming that doesn't require SSH or VNC. Why can't I run virtual machines?
So, yes, you can do some creative work in this limited environment. But it's nowhere near the flexibility a real computer would offer. And that's a shame given how powerful the actual hardware is.
Personal computers aren’t nearly as personal as our smartphones. My laptop has no clue about my heart rate, exercise level, how much I’m spending at the grocery store, where I am any time I leave the house, etc.
It’s not unreasonable to argue that a smartphone requires more security than a laptop.
Apple allows sideloading on computers because that’s how computers have always been. Introducing a Computer back then that had no means of getting needed software would be suicide for any computer. It had to open because computers for the most part were always open and Apple didn’t have the leverage or starting position like they did with the iPhone.
Something like a Chromebook would have absolutely failed decades ago. A lot of things done today would have failed decades ago and vice versa.
> Something like a Chromebook would have absolutely failed decades ago
Video game consoles existed decades ago, were locked down systems, and succeeded tremendously… starting all the way back in the 1970s with Atari 2600.
> because that’s how computers have always been
Phones before the iPhone allowed any app to be installed. J2ME. There was no precedent to do what Apple did with a lockdown like that, as far as I remember. Glad to be corrected but don’t forget to include the J2ME landscape in your analysis.
Video game consoles were extremely limited, as well as being cheap enough that people could buy several, as well as being completely inessential luxury toys, not tools for running businesses and lives.
The scope and utility of a piece of technology is a weak argument in anti-trust debates, in my opinion. You have a similar set of issues with game consoles, too. Why should publishers like EA have to fork over 30% of their PS sales to Sony but Naughty Dog doesn’t have such a restriction? And have you even read about the onerous requirements that Sony imposes to allow for cross-play? And why can’t MS offer a streaming Game Pass on a Sony console? Being extremely limited does not make one not subject to anti-trust scrutiny.
Yes but we’re not talking about us we’re talking about general consumers and the useful of a tool for general consumers. The general consumers is not is talking Linux or using Linux app. The closest they’ll ever touch to Linux is Unix via MacOS.
We can write 100 things for Linux but it means Jack nothing to a consumer who will never do that to the Chromebooks. I.e School IT’s for student use.
Sideloading apps on MacOS, Android and ChromeOS all require taking a few additional steps. It's unlikely that most average consumer will ever take these steps, but it is easily doable for those consumers if you follow online instructions (and so some do.)
iOS really is unique in the level of difficulty involved in sideloading apps.
Well said. What if Apple's popup said "personalization" instead of "tracking"? Advertising works well for most of us, most of the time. Ironically, Apple is spending significant sums on advertising that touts how they are crippling advertising to protect your privacy.
Follow the money - Apple's "privacy" initiative is just about Apple ensuring that every dollar spent in an iOS device sends 30 cents to Apple. That isn't the case with ads not served by Apple. So Apple is making themselves the only viable way to serve ads on iOS (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223) and encouraging in-app purchases for everything else - problem solved.
Also, isn't it convenient that Apple is only concerned about their customer's privacy for business conducted outside of China and Russia?
As it should and I don’t care. Advertisers and data brokers get no sympathy from me. An Apple ad venue allows for some more uniform controls as well, such as tracking revokable consent of a user’s data, even if you found a way to pay the user for their data at some point.
I agree Apple has the right to run the lawful aspects of their business as they see fit but I'm a little concerned about those that think Apple has their back with this privacy scam.
This change will really hurt them. The biggest effect is on paid app installs since you no longer have access to the advertiser ID which makes it extremely difficult to measure performance and tracking app usage on the device. I’ll take a bet that some of this gets rolled back when it hurts Apple’s App Store revenue.
