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Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

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Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#411

Post by chillacy »

theshrike79 wrote: post #325
hu3 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hyperbole. People can sideload Android apps for a decade now and I have yet to see someone complain that sideloading did something bad let alone blame the OS for it. That is such a rare case that I have a hard time trying to justify the loss of freedom.

There are dozens of Android manufacturers. If an Android phone breaks, people complain about the manufacturer or maybe the telco they bought the phone from. Apple is a singular target, unlike anything in the Android ecosystem.

That sounds plausible but I've never seen it happen. Maybe you could provide some examples to back up your claim?

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#412

Post by tinus_hn »

gruez wrote: post #375
JohnTHaller wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Windows world, you can just pick a new certificate vendor. In Apple world, they have a monopoly and get to dictate who gets 'full access' to both their mobile devices and their desktops/laptops. They could still do unsigned MacOS apps from here out, but Apple has purposely made it difficult for end users to run them.

>In Windows world, you can just pick a new certificate vendor I mean if they really wanted to they could blacklist your CN or O value in the certificate, or add you to the windows defender/smartscreen detection list, which will effectively kill your app for a good segment of the windows userbase.

Which is why this certificate system is completely useless, making people expend a lot of effort to prove nothing.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#413

Post by babaganoosh89 »

brundolf wrote: post #396
grishka wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so that's why I never liked nor trusted this whole idea of code signing with non-self-signed certificates, especially on desktop OSes. This notarization mechanism introduced a single point of failure: Apple. And now there is concrete evidence of how exactly this is bad. On a device I own, there should be no parties that are trusted more than myself. It's ridiculous I even have to write this.

It's important to note that you can still run unsigned Mac apps. Apple isn't preventing users from running a tool they want to run, it's just showing them a big scary warning and making them jump through some extra hoops. It's incredibly scummy and inappropriate, but I would put it more along the lines of an attack-ad than an outright ban. Edit: Now, one thing that isn't totally clear is whether or not devs who have…

Notarizing has been mandatory since Catalina: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09032019a

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#414

Post by gpm »

ArchOversight wrote: post #103
0x402DF854 wrote: post #23

From a preliminary statement of Epic's motion: > Just over two weeks ago, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook was asked during a Congressional hearing whether Apple has “ever retaliated against or disadvantaged a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store”. Mr. Cook testified, “We do not retaliate or bully people. It’s strongly against our company culture.”

This isn't retaliation though for Epic going on Twitter and being angry about the App Store practices, or the situation like Hey where the was a lot of press and negativity. Epic breached the terms of the agreement for their app, so their app was removed from the App Store. Other than needing to fix their app to no longer be in violation of the guidelines, they could have cured that breach of the contract. Instead Ep…

The contract is almost entirely besides the point.

Either Apple is violating the law, any contract terms related to this violation are void as a result, and Apple is illegally retaliating.

Or Apple is not violating the law, and they are generally free to do as they please.

I say "almost" for the same reason I say "generally". It might be the case that if Apple is not violating the law and they wrote the contract badly then they aren't free to do what they want. But no one is arguing that because it's highly unlikely to be the case.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#415

Post by fooey »

rgovostes wrote: post #391

From Epic's filing, here is an excerpt from Apple's notice listing the Developer Program features that Epic will lose access to when its membership is terminated: - All Apple software, SDKs, APIs, and developer tools - Pre-release versions of iOS, iPad OS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS - Pre-release versions of beta tools such as Reality Composer, Create ML, Apple Configurator, etc. - Notarization service for macOS apps - App…

Besides the Unreal the game engine, Epic has been making huge inroads leveraging Unreal as a virtual movie set, as seen on Mandalorian.

I would assume most of the hardware used in movie production is Mac hardware, so that entire initiative just went up in smoke.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#416

Post by brundolf »

babaganoosh89 wrote: post #413
brundolf wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to note that you can still run unsigned Mac apps. Apple isn't preventing users from running a tool they want to run, it's just showing them a big scary warning and making them jump through some extra hoops. It's incredibly scummy and inappropriate, but I would put it more along the lines of an attack-ad than an outright ban. Edit: Now, one thing that isn't totally clear is whether or not devs who have…

Notarizing has been mandatory since Catalina: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09032019a

You can bypass it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#417

Post by tdesilva »

fatbird wrote: post #172
pmontra wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then customers that want that product go to another store chain. This makes stores think twice before banning some products or brands. There is only one store in iOS country.

But there are several stores in mobile country, and more again in platform country. Drawing the boundary of the market around iOS seems circular. "They're a monopoly because they have 100% of the market share on the market that's specific to them."

It's a lot easier to switch which store you shop than what phone you use. Switching iOS to Android costs a non-trivial amount of money. There's also a lot of lock-in, migrating from apps in Apple land to Android land. Some people may have multiple Apple devices even. These people face a very high barrier to switching.

To me this is like asking someone dissatisfied with the grocery store that has a monopoly over their town to just move to another city.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#418

Post by mvn9 »

misnome wrote: post #364
mvn9 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why then all those monopoly-discussions? Cannot any program be 'side-loaded' by creating a personal team? Or the other way round: What good would be a personal team for epic if they cannot test their games on actual phones? If personal teams allow side-loading of apps, why isn't this a way to distribute apps? Why is there no app store for personal team apps?

You need to re-sign it frequently because the certificate is only short-lived, and I think there are difficulties in signing existing binaries that make it mostly only useful for things you can distribute the source for. It's not really an alternative to an app store. There are also enterprise signing certificates for distributing custom apps within large companies without these restrictions, along with cases in the…

How can they shut down distribution? If a personal team can install any sourcecode, how could apple block the distribution? Even if they scan for a binary hash, all it takes are some minor modifications to have a different program to install.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#419

Post by threeseed »

amaccuish wrote: post #97

What took me aback was the withdrawing permission to notarise their apps for Mac. That was only meant to be a check for known vulnerabilities/malicious software. Apple was more within their rights to kick Fortnite until the dust has settled from the iOS store, that was the retaliation, but now a mechanism supposedly for security has been repurposed as punishment. That's a pretty nasty move and I feel the mask has sli…

According to Apple:

"Upon further review of the activity associated with your Apple Developer Program membership, we have identified several violations of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement"

So it doesn't sound like it was just for this Fortnite issue.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#420

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

brundolf wrote: post #396
grishka wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so that's why I never liked nor trusted this whole idea of code signing with non-self-signed certificates, especially on desktop OSes. This notarization mechanism introduced a single point of failure: Apple. And now there is concrete evidence of how exactly this is bad. On a device I own, there should be no parties that are trusted more than myself. It's ridiculous I even have to write this.

It's important to note that you can still run unsigned Mac apps. Apple isn't preventing users from running a tool they want to run, it's just showing them a big scary warning and making them jump through some extra hoops. It's incredibly scummy and inappropriate, but I would put it more along the lines of an attack-ad than an outright ban. Edit: Now, one thing that isn't totally clear is whether or not devs who have…

The pop-up box you get when you try to run unsigned applications gives the user absolutely no hint as to how they can jump through those hoops to run the thing. You need to know what to google for to find the right magic incantation to enter into the macOS terminal.

On Windows, at least, the “Run anyway” button is merely behind the “More information...” link.

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