Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#901

Post by raxxorrax » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 8:22 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #297

And in one fell swoop, Apple has made it effectively impossible to install this app on your phone. There's no realistic workaround. † Apple should never have been capable of making such a drastic decision for all of their customers. It's one thing to make determinations about what products are allowed in your store, but quite another to unilaterally ban software from what is many people's primary computer. We live in…

iPhones, iPads and the whole mobile device segment is useless if a company can decide the content. It will never be your device.

Microsoft tried the same crap with their store, which was fortunately rejected to a large degree. The future of software shouldn't look so backwards. I can understand users being drawn in by accessibility, which is hard to realize for more open systems. But I don't really understand developers choosing Apple aside from monetary opportunities.

Macs try to go in a similar direction, so these comments saying I shouldn't care about app notarization are nothing but short sighted in my opinion. Because the security benefit is minuscule and new dangers like this pretty impalpable but nevertheless very real and the degree of enforcement of these mechanism will certainly increase as soon as Apple sees the opportunity.

Overall a crappy platform to develop against.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#902

Post by QuesnayJr » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 9:03 AM UTC

ru999gol wrote: post #442

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In principle code signing is a good idea, this way Apple can ensure an improved security standard over their competition. There is nothing wrong with code signing. There is everything wrong with making Apple the sole arbiter of mandatory code signing. It's the difference between being against locks, and being against someone else owning the keys to your house. --- > I won't blame Apple, they aren't people [...] I b…

> Corporations are not robots. Apple is run by people, and specifically people who are much more knowledgable on this subject than the average consumer. They should feel some level of social responsibility. Sometimes I wonder how many instances to the contrary people need to get this falsehood out of their heads. Corporations are only beholden to their shareholders, if any one person at Apple (including the CEO) is n…

They're really not. In court, it is sufficient to be able to argue that your actions are in the long-term interest of the company. In practice, CEOs are hard to replace, and it is easy for them to pack the board. Lots of companies have dual class shares so that a group of insiders can run the company however they see fit.

Anyway, even if it were true in practice, this is entirely the result of laws and court decisions. Governments could change it with the stroke of a pen.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#903

Post by yeahforsureman » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #831

yeahforsureman wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's human nature. A lot of people were fairly satisfied even behind the Iron Curtain for a time before the economic dysfunction became too apparent. Yet even then as now, we have every right to project and even attempt to impose these "western" ideals of individual human rights on systems that try to deny them from any one individual . The only "western" thing about them is that the particular framework of d…

Right, but it will be several generations before that even becomes a possibility. Right now you have the famine generation who remembers how terrible things used to be, and will be content as long as things are and continue to improve.

Perhaps. Then again, people don't often get, for example, how brutish even Western Europe was pre-1945. But realistically, yeah, not during the current generation of people in power.

The next generation looks worrying, too, and authoritarian systems certainly can persist and are able to adapt over time. Yet they are always brittle in many ways. It sure looks like Chinese leaders know this, too.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#904

Post by saagarjha » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

Forbo wrote: post #843

saagarjha wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the stuff that ships on the average Android device is closed-source and written by Google.

Cool. The question still stands, how does that make AOSP useless? For the vast majority of applications, I can find reasonable FOSS equivalents in F-Droid.

I wouldn't call it "useless", but it's certainly not what most people would consider Android at that point.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#905

Post by decoyworker » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 12:02 PM UTC

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #627

decoyworker wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are seeking new revenue in the Chinese market. To them they see a minuscule boycott in the US as the cost of gaining that market- net positive.

China, through its own behavior in situations like these, makes its own market less attractive for companies and investors, though. You'd have to be crazy to see what is going on right now, and go all-in in with the market in China. The arbitrary power of the CPC over market access is a huge liability. Big companies may still want to do business in China, but they need stronger footholds in other markets to offset th…

That's true. The Chinese government could just decide they do not like you and you have no recourse whatsoever. Good point.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#906

Post by glitchc » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 12:09 PM UTC

CrystalLangUser wrote: post #576

glitchc wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thread on HN is a far cry from what a typical American thinks. America doesn’t need to take over other nations in the parochial sense. Rather the number of bases the US has established throughout the world accomplish manifest destiny in a modern fashion. No other country has or has ever had this level or scale of military deployment.

That has nothing to do with manifest destiny or even the average American. People are almost completely unaware of how many bases we have abroad, etc. You are trying to paint a portrait of Americans in general that is flagrantly false.

I didn’t think I was bashing or portraying a negative statement, rather shedding light on an objective truth. I can understand that Americans don’t know much at all about those bases. But they do know how much their military is costing (in broad terms) and are happy to continue supporting that.

Much evidence points to the sentiment that the US behaves like a modern-day Rome and has attempted (or is attempting) to achieve “Pax Americana” globally. Again, not necessarily a bad concept as the world could always use more stability.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#907

Post by matwood » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 12:50 PM UTC

mslate wrote: post #882

xibalba wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is currently dependent on Chinese manufacturing This seems like the single most overlooked aspect of this. Bc of this, China has existential leverage over Apple.

The single most overlooked aspect of this is how many Chinese are employed as part of Apple’s supply chain. It is not in CCP interest to destroy millions of Chinese citizens’ incomes.

This is a side I hadn't thought of. But, given how China appears to treat its citizens do you think they really care?

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#908

Post by mirimir » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

This will sound crazy, I know. And I'm 90% sure that it's unworkable. But I gotta ask.

I've read that virtual iOS machines are available for testing apps. Tight access control, I know. But ...

So with a beefy iPhone or tablet, could one run a tweaked iOS VM? The host machine would handle Interactions with the cell network and Apple. And the virtual iOs would handle userland and apps. And it could be tweaked to work with a different company, use a different app store, etc. Basically be independent from Apple. With it's own FDE etc.

It'd basically be a bunch of libraries, utilities and apps to install. Would that be possible? I suppose that it would require liberating considerablr source from Apple.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#909

Post by helen___keller » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #821

helen___keller wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think there's any risk to Americans or American corporations that the president will unilaterally ban American corporations from doing business with me, an American There is a very real risk to me, an American, that the products or services sold to me by an American corporation will be degraded or changed at the request of the CCP in exchange for that corporations continued access to the Chinese market Do…

But they may very well ban you from doing business with a foreign company, for completely arbitrary and opaque reasons. You may be suddenly told that you have to break off relations with your largest customer, or a product you own may suddenly lose important functionality. Millions of Europeans are now affected by the American Huawei ban, which risks degrading the phones that they bought. This is far more serious tha…

In your earlier post you said

> nobody seems to care too much

I explained this is because Americans doing business with American companies are not affected by the things you describe. you're the only one ascribing values like "is more serious than Huaweis CEO being imprisoned", I never said that and I didn't see anybody else in this thread even mention Huawei

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#910

Post by chapium » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #776

braythwayt wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument reminds me of the gun control argument. People in favour of "more guns" are fully aware that more guns means a more dangerous society. But they consider the freedom to choose whether to own guns more important than living in a statistically safer society. Whereas, people in favour of "gun control" consider the safety of society overall to be much more important than the freedom to own devices designed t…

This also mirrors Chinese vs. American values perfectly. The Chinese believe in the Apple model of safety, greater good, social harmony, and the ends justifying the means over individual liberties. The concentration camps, great firewall, IP theft, everything we see as dysfunctional about China stems from this belief system. Americans don't believe in the "greater good" or "the ends justify the means" and it results…

I'd hope that a society can believe in a collective good without resorting to concentration camps.