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Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

appfairness.org

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Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#841

Post by Polylactic_acid »

vorpalhex wrote: post #621
ta8964586 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious, how would you give users "the freedom to stop all data collection by these devices" without some kind of walled garden. Is the solution something like flatpack for all apps? but then how do you make sure all apps don't just refuse to work without permission to collect data or manage to collect information without users knowing? You can't force developers to be honest about what their app does witho…

You can monitor what calls an app makes. LittleSnitch on Mac is an example example of this. There are going to be nefarious actors who still manage to bypass it, and there are going to be risks outside of a walled garden - and that's a meaningful choice we can provide users. "Hey, you can stay inside the app store and get these promises, or you can install what you want and risk X, Y and Z." Android does this.. decen…

This isn't good enough. Sure you can monitor it if you have a load of time, but then what do you do when you find out its doing something evil? What do you do when you find out every app is doing something evil? You either opt out of proprietary software entirely or you let apple use their weight to force apps to stop being evil.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#842

Post by lewdev »

burlesona wrote: post #747
mthoms wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To me the iPhone is a console, end of story. I'm so tired of hearing this ridiculous analogy. From a purely technical stand point it may be true, but for a large chunk of the population, the smartphone is their one and only connection to the digital world. It controls their connection to their bank accounts, governments, news/discourse, family, friends, dating life, education (formal and informal), medical informati…

Nothing you are saying is false, but why can't people who want a different experience just buy an Android or alternative phone? A smartphone may be an essential utility, but an iPhone specifically is not. I feel your argument is like saying I want my car to be gas-powered and I want it to be a Tesla. It doesn't matter that it that many other manufacturers exist, I demand Tesla make gas-powered cars so that I can buy…

Absolutely. The iPhone is actually a "nice to have" utility. A $100 phone from Walmart will fulfill the "base-level necessities for modern life." The game console is an awesome analogy.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#843

Post by nodamage »

simion314 wrote: post #141
sneak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If users didn’t want these things, users wouldn’t buy them. For the vast majority of people, and iPhone is way, way better than a computer that can run any app, precisely because it can’t run any app they click on. I’m a hacker, so I would love to be able to install any software I want on my iPhone, and introspect it in other ways. Most users, however, would have a way worse experience using their phone if they were…

>Most users, however, would have a way worse experience using their phone if they were given this option, because a non-trivial percentage of them would follow the tutorials online provided to them by malware authors to install their malware. I think Apple fans exagerrate when they say that most users are so "inexperienced" to get taken advantage off. - this number of completly inexperienced user is not proven to be…

> if you look at Android or OSX you don't see 51% of users having malware on their machine

Have you actually looked up the statistics? According to Kaspersky (https://securelist.com/mobile-malware-evolution-2019/96280/) mobile malware attacks in 2019 affected: 60.64% of users in Iran, 44.43% in Pakistan, 43.17% in Bangladesh, 40.20% in Algeria, 37.98% in India, 35.12% in Indonesia, etc. These are not small numbers.

> - with the amount of money Apple has they could afford to improve the security by adding more sand boxing and making unlocking of the phone by "tricked incompetent users almost impossible"

Sandboxing can protect against system vulnerabilities but does not help protect privacy in the same way App Store review guidelines do. (For example, by disallowing user tracking in games designed for children.)

> - I assume apps and websites can use your microphone and camera on your phone, it is under soem popup/permission prompt, why do you trust the "inexperienced users" with the camera permissions some bad person could trick them.

Temporary access to a microphone or camera is nowhere the same level of security risk as allowing third-party applications to install other applications on your phone.

> - "protecting" an unknown small number of users by limiting the rest makes no sense

Again, these are not small numbers of users, nor are they unknown. Android malware routinely infects millions of devices:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-android-malware-has-infec...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-andr...

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#844

Post by reificator »

valuearb wrote: post #816
gpm wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To keep the continuity of discussion, I assume that this comment was posted here because my top level comment was in part a reply to your (temp667's) comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579860 I appreciate the attempt to connect this to the anti-trust suit, but I don't see this as a good justification for why your original critique is relevant for a few reasons: - Many of the practices in your origin…

Selling separately destroys the iPhone brand and business model. Far fewer would pay for a separate OS, iPhones would have to be more expensive if they didn’t bundle a services component, customers wouldn’t trust iPhone as much. There is a simple solution, and it’s not misguided delusional antitrust talk. It’s buying the other type of smartphone that is 85% of unit sales world wide.

Two choices for something as complex as a smartphone does not make a free market.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#845

Post by lewdev »

burlesona wrote: post #755
bogwog wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't disagree but does this mean Sony should allow, for example, Steam to be installed on the PS5? That would be great for the hundreds of millions (billions?) of consumers and thousands of developers in the global game industry, but bad for exactly 3 companies: Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.

It would also largely undo the business model of having consoles in the first place, and likely result in there never being another gaming console. Which would be bad for a whole lot of businesses besides Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, and for a whole bunch of consumers who really like the console gaming experience as distinct from PC.

Yup, it's why the NES beat out Atari. They had strict control over the quality of games published for their console and so everyone bought NESs over Ataris.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#846

Post by giantrobot »

bogwog wrote: post #646
zepto wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no stores will be able to compete with Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc, who already have giant reach and network effects, Consumers will have to deal with them all, as will developers. There will be a small group of store owners.

> Almost no stores will be able to compete with Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc, who already have giant reach and network effects, First of all, that is not true at all. And second, even if it were true, it'd be a far better situation for developers than the current status quo.

We have already been through the multiple "app stores" model and it was fucking awful. Back before the iPhone and Android there were dozens of different stores for PalmOS, Symbian, and PocketPC/Windows Mobile, even boxed software sold on CDs.

There were no guarantees with any of the stores. Many didn't even host stuff they sold. So you'd buy from the "App Store", download from the developer's site, and then deal with whatever license system the developer used. Since there was no standard way to work with the store there was no standard mechanism of distributing licenses. Signing was also a joke as there was no good way to let end users validate, in a usable way, the signatures of apps or even that the signing entity was who they claimed to be.

Piracy was rampant because stores sucked, prices were onerous, and cracking the software or just sharing licenses was too easy. The current App Store model developed as a response to a broken market for mobile apps.

Hate on the App Store model all you want but it solved significant problems that plagued the industry for years.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#848

Post by nodamage »

FreeFull wrote: post #649
abc-xyz wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android also have a lot of malware issues. I’ve had to help factory reset Android phones quite a few times because friends and family ended up getting spammed with sex notifications and had their search engine hijacked. Windows and OSX suffers from the same problems. The reason these platforms suffer from malware, while iOS does not, is because they allow third-party installations.

From what I've seen, the majority of Android malware either comes from Google's Play Store, or gets included on the phones by certain OEMs. F-droid in particular, due to its open source requirement, hasn't ended up hosting any malware so far.

This is incorrect. Google's own statistics (https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_S...) indicate that devices that use side-loading have an 8x relative higher incidence of malware compared to devices that only install apps from the Google Play Store.

(Note: I believe Google's absolute numbers are significantly underestimated due to the poor performance of Google Play Protect compared to other malware detection tools, but so far they are the only source I have found that publishes relative numbers between the Play Store vs side-loading.)

As some high profile examples:

- HummingBad infected 85 million devices primarily via direct-download on malicious adult websites. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-android-malware-has-infec...)

- Agent Smith infected 25 million devices primarily via a third-party app store. (https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-andr...)

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#849

Post by ThatPlayer »

pb7 wrote: post #697
ThatPlayer wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being able to use apps that Apple deem inappropriate: there's no PornHub app for anyone who wants that. Or more recently Microsoft's xCloud streaming app has been blocked even though it's not different than something like Netflix.

To show good faith, I will wholeheartedly agree that allowing Netflix and Spotify but not allowing xCloud, Stadia, Facebook Gaming, and now presumably Luna will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, moreso than Epic et al. There is no practical distinction between streaming video frames of The Witcher from Netflix and The Witcher 3 from xCloud. Edit: Genuine question. Is it common for any mix-use store, physical…

And that's why to me the issue isn't Apple's App Store, but rather Apple App Store's monopoly on iOS apps. I'm not asking for those apps to be on the App Store, but I think as an owner of the device, I should be able to get whatever app I want on MY device.

Re: Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

#850

Post by nodamage »

donmcronald wrote: post #835
rimliu wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common misconception of HN crowd: assumption that everyone are like them and actually want complete control. There is a nontrivial cost to having that control and not many actually want it. They want something that works and is useable.

I don't mind if people want to pay for someone to curate their apps, but I don't see any reason developers shouldn't be able to charge those people +43% for buying through the curated app store. If there's really as much value as everyone claims then users won't have a problem paying extra, right? I also think it's crazy that IAPs are viewed as anything more than a simple payment that would incur normal payment proce…

Framing the 30% as "payment processing" is a fundamentally flawed comparison. Apple builds the entire ecosystem and suite of tools that developers use to actually make apps for the iPhone.

Visa and Mastercard only provide payment processing, they don't provide the equivalent of the iOS SDKs, Xcode, the App Store, etc., to their merchants.

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