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Rethinking the App Store

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Re: Rethinking the App Store

#201

Post by AnthonyMouse »

nemothekid wrote: post #172
dkersten wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. The only winners in the current situation are Apple. By opening it up to competitor app stores, yes competitors would benefit, but so would developers and so would their users. The App Store as it stands has completely stagnated to the point where it’s useless to me outside of actually downloading or buying an app. It’s been years since I’ve been able to discover new apps though it, now relying for…

> The only winners in the current situation are Apple. By opening it up to competitor app stores, yes competitors would benefit, but so would developers and so would their users. It's hard for me to reconcile this, and I keep seeing that 3rd party app stores would be better for users, but it all seems very handwavy. You would think this would be an easy point to prove as Android has had alternative app stores for yea…

> You would think this would be an easy point to prove as Android has had alternative app stores for years, but there seem to be no winners there. I'm not sure how having to download app specific app stores (i.e. Epic's app store) is better for anyone except for Epic.

Let's start with one point. Third party stores don't have to be popular in order for them to be beneficial, because their existence causes the dominant store to take competitive steps to avoid their attaining popularity.

For example, you can install actual Firefox on Android, from Google Play, instead of it being nothing but a skin over the system browser like it is on iOS. Because if they didn't allow actual Firefox in Google Play, it would still be in F-Droid or similar, and that would make the competing store more popular. Since they don't want that, they allow it in the default store. Then the default store remains dominant, but only because it does beneficial things like that as a result of the competitive pressure. And third party apps can send and receive SMS on Android and various other things that Apple doesn't allow solely because it pushes people to use Apple's apps instead and there is no competitive pressure from other stores pushing Apple to allow those competing apps in their store.

But more than that, the other Android stores are actually useful, they just tend to have a niche. Because people are still going to use the default store unless there is a reason not to, since it's lower friction. But the other stores still get to address the cases that the default store fails at. So the fact that they exist at all is proof that they're doing something useful, since otherwise who would sustain them?

> I'm not sure how having to download app specific app stores (i.e. Epic's app store) is better for anyone except for Epic.

I mean, the fact that they're not paying Apple 30% and then passing most of that savings on to the customer is obviously going to save the customer money.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#202

Post by saagarjha »

threeseed wrote: post #29
supermatt wrote: post #13

I am of the opinion that the only fair option is to allow 3rd party stores with the same permissions as the official app store. Apples curation isn't (as they suggest) preventing malware, theft of information, etc - this if verifiably false given recent history with apps like tiktok stealing clipboard content. The ability to change content of payment screens post-approval (as epic have just done) also means that cura…

Part of Apple's security does in fact come from the curation process. Access to private APIs for example is not preventable at runtime due to the way Objective-C works. And the ability to change payment screens etc at runtime has always been possible. But Apple simply bans the developer and so instances of this happening in the wild have been basically non-existant.

Screening private API fundamentally has nothing to do with how Objective-C works and everything to do with leaving private API out in places where an application can call them–the same process that an app is running code in. Switching away from Objective-C is not going to solve this problem.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#203

Post by nvrspyx »

gwd wrote: post #169
realityking wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am thinking Apple is like a union for their users. While I'm decidedly not Epic's side on this I think this is a misleading and dangerous argument. In a union, members get to vote to change the rules to benefit the membership. Apple never asked for my input on App Store rules.

But that's part of what you're buying when you buy Apple. It would be one thing if Apple controlled 86% of the mobile phone market, and you as a consumer (or an app developer) didn't have much choice; but actually Apple only controls 14% of the smartphone market[1]. Both consumers and developers have lots of other options. [1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...

I think we're mostly contextualizing this to the US, where Apple has over 50% (~58% last I checked) of the market, which is where most competition of their own apps exist. Last I checked, iOS had ~24% of global market share.

Regardless, 14% of 3.5 billion is still so ridiculously large that each phone OS should be considered their own market, not competitors within the same market. You wouldn't consider a microwave and a toaster oven to be in the same market, even if they're both kitchen appliances that heat up food because they're individual markets. Not all people want a microwave and not all people can afford a toaster oven due to space or financial priorities. In the world of tech, where there's no real definitive line between markets and any one company can have an audience of more people than any monopoly in the past, the old ways of drawing a line in the sand based on a percentage no longer works.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#204

Post by the_other »

auggierose wrote: post #160
jakelazaroff wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So now the US government and the EU will be making legislation that specifies phone APIs and designs user interfaces. Great! This, but unironically. It's not hard to think of an example where "legislation that specifies APIs and designs user interfaces" is unambiguously good — say, accessibility requirements for commercial software.

I think that's pretty bad. A development shop shouldn't be forced to follow all sorts of accessibility requirements.

As a disabled person, I’m forced to disagree. Most disability is social: activities are hard to perform not due to physical limitation (although this has some effect), but because social constructs and practices obstruct access.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#205

Post by saagarjha »

sroussey wrote: post #117
PikachuEXE wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look MacOS They do block "unidentified" apps by default but you still have the option to run it anyway (after a series of warnings maybe) But you can still run them And I think it can be a start

No, you must get Apple to approve/notarize now, regardless of Mac App Store.

Notarization is currently not a requirement.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#206

Post by the_other »

simonh wrote: post #171
auggierose wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's pretty bad. A development shop shouldn't be forced to follow all sorts of accessibility requirements.

Accessibility UIs that are designed by committee and set in stone. No innovation allowed, by law. Gah, ironically Apple's platforms have the best accessibility in the industry regardless of legislation. They pretty much always have.

Disability legislation doesn’t design solutions: it provides requirements which are inputs into your design process. The solutions are up to you.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#207

Post by rarepostinlurkr »

supermatt wrote: post #170
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how 3rd party stores can possibly work in a system that relies on rigid permissions. HN fetishises root access as if it's some kind of magic panacea, but in reality most users don't care about root access at all - they want apps that work, they have zero interest in tinkering with software for its own sake, and root access will not make apps more reliable or more secure. The main problems with the App Sto…

There is no reason for "root access". An API call to install a packaged app in a sandbox, and update apps that are installed is all that you would require. Apps would be consistently installed to a sandbox identified by their bundle identifier (which is typically domain-based). This is effectively what already happens on iOS. App certification/verification would be done using exactly the same certs we use for domains…

> For me the biggest problem is Apple deciding what/whose apps ios (and macos, given the recent code signing requirements coming with mac silicon...) users are permitted to use.

Thats FUD. The release notes even address it "This new behavior doesn’t change the long-established policy that our users and developers can run arbitrary code on their Macs, and is designed to simplify the execution policies on Apple silicon Mac computers and enable the system to better detect code modifications."

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#208

Post by AnthonyMouse »

fjdjsmsm wrote: post #184
kevincox wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is. I have the best of both worlds. Most of the time I download apps from a store that is roughly as safe as the Apple store. (Maybe not quite as high, but I don't think that this changes the argument). However if there is some software that Google doesn't like I can install it myself. Or I can run a patch that some developer posted on GitHub and test it before it has been merged and published. It shows th…

95% of the public don’t even know what GitHub is. The vast majority of people aren’t going to run patches a developer posted there. Anyway, the argument was that the Apple app store was stifling app development. In your reply you yourself say the apps on the Google store are “Maybe not quite as high” quality.

> 95% of the public don’t even know what GitHub is. The vast majority of people aren’t going to run patches a developer posted there.

Which doesn't matter, because the person who is going to test your patch does, or the person who will write their own and submit it. Which makes the app better, for everybody.

> Anyway, the argument was that the Apple app store was stifling app development. In your reply you yourself say the apps on the Google store are “Maybe not quite as high” quality.

There is a difference between the quality of an app and the quality of a store. If Google Play contains all the same apps as Apple's app store, but they're higher quality because people hack on them more, it could still have a lower average quality if the store itself is less selective and there are also a bunch of lower quality apps. Which doesn't really matter because nobody is making you install those ones. Especially when you're not using the store for discovery to begin with, which they're increasingly useless at.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#209

Post by scarface74 »

saagarjha wrote: post #195
scarface74 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite has also demonstrated how sloppy third party developers are with respect to security. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/fortnites-android-vu... And at least Epic wasn’t purposefully installing back doors. Unlike Zoom. https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local-web-...

That argument doesn't make sense, because Apple isn't going to lower the sandboxing requirement for anyone, it's just going to provide an API to install an IPA. (Actually, that API already exists of course, they'll just remove the check that makes sure you're Apple when you call it.) Third parties' security practices have no bearing on how secure Apple makes their own platform–the parent comment is literally saying "…

A third party App Store by definition has permission to download other code. Android also has a sandbox. That didn’t prevent the security vulnerability from Fortnite.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#210

Post by baddox »

saagarjha wrote: post #194
baddox wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect a large portion of Apple’s users value the fact that they can’t break their phone by accidentally installing the wrong app or clicking the wrong button. To them it might not be clear what they’re getting from this no-rules App Store.

I think people using Cydia had a pretty good idea of what they were doing.

Most of them probably did, because it was generally difficult to jailbreak the phone and there wasn't much reason to do so unless you were a hobbyist. App piracy was definitely a thing though, and I bet there were some people who did it because a friend told them they can get free apps, only to end up installing stuff that made the phone very buggy (which was definitely easy to do).

It's easy to say "well that's just their own fault if they installed something bad," but I don't think Apple really cares to argue with their customers over whose fault something technically was. Apple just wants their customers to have phones that are working well.

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