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About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

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Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#211

Post by musicale »

paultopia wrote: post #130
yakz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can build on it... developers have been building on it for years and making money doing it. Don't make an app that allows users to run unapproved software. I think that's a pretty clear rule. If your app makes money (directly or indirectly), pay Apple whatever portion of your revenue that Apple demands. I also think that's a pretty clear rule. If there's something that should obviously be regulated out of existe…

But its absolutely not true that this is enforced consistently. My iPhone currently contains three full programming language interpreters from the App Store---one for JavaScript, one for Python, and one for Clojurescript. I know one of those can make arbitrary network requests because I've done it, and I think the other two can as well. So how is that different from iSH? Apple has approved a bunch of apps that can go…

It really isn't. You can definitely download code into Scriptable and Pythonista, although I don't think they have package managers.

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#212

Post by roblabla »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #139
paultopia wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But its absolutely not true that this is enforced consistently. My iPhone currently contains three full programming language interpreters from the App Store---one for JavaScript, one for Python, and one for Clojurescript. I know one of those can make arbitrary network requests because I've done it, and I think the other two can as well. So how is that different from iSH? Apple has approved a bunch of apps that can go…

I think JavaScript/Clojurescript is the exception because they control the runtime and JIT: whether or not you buy their explanation, I think the reason they state is that this is to enable sandboxing. This is at least plausible to me: to have effective sandboxing, you need to restrict the APIs that a device can call, which means blocking the ability to generate and run arbitrary machine code on-device.

> to have effective sandboxing, you need to restrict the APIs that a device can call, which means blocking the ability to generate and run arbitrary machine code on-device.

Please, no, this is not how security and sandboxing works at all. Otherwise, the moment you have an arbitrary code vulnerability, you'd get full access to everything.

The way effective sandboxing works is by giving a process a set of capabilities/permissions, what have you, that is enforced by the kernel. Those permissions can be "can I open files", "can I talk to the camera subsystem", etc. Then, even if you somehow manage to generate the right function call at runtime, the call will fail. And to be clear, this is how apple's own security works.

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#213

Post by yoz-y »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #139
paultopia wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But its absolutely not true that this is enforced consistently. My iPhone currently contains three full programming language interpreters from the App Store---one for JavaScript, one for Python, and one for Clojurescript. I know one of those can make arbitrary network requests because I've done it, and I think the other two can as well. So how is that different from iSH? Apple has approved a bunch of apps that can go…

I think JavaScript/Clojurescript is the exception because they control the runtime and JIT: whether or not you buy their explanation, I think the reason they state is that this is to enable sandboxing. This is at least plausible to me: to have effective sandboxing, you need to restrict the APIs that a device can call, which means blocking the ability to generate and run arbitrary machine code on-device.

But iSH isn’t running arbitrary machine code, it’s a x86 emulator running Linux inside. It’s more sandboxed than a JS runtime, which actually does compile down to machine code.

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#214

Post by ratww »

fxtentacle wrote: post #193
threeseed wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS developers have made over a half a trillion dollars over the last decade on this unsustainable, constantly shifting foundation that they hate so much. Makes you wonder why they bother ? Maybe it's because the very rules you say developers hate are the ones users find appealing.

No, only 0.15 trillion [1] spread out over roughly 1 mio games and 3.4 mio non-gaming apps [2]. So that's a mere $35k in average lifetime value. But as anyone used to lying with statistics knows, the average revenue is much higher than the median revenue. In Apple's case, the factor appears to be 56x [3]. So the typical App Store app makes $630 in total over its entire lifetime. That's surely not enough to finance it…

You need to take into account that lots of apps rely on advertisement (especially these days), and another big chunk is made to interact with something else that makes the money (like Netflix or Amazon).

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#215

Post by enragedcacti »

syrrim wrote: post #190

>The nature of iSH meant that this problem was fundamental, as users can always add back functionality that we remove. That's the point, isn't it? When I had an iphone, I always understood that there are no local terminal apps because apple banned them. They shifted the rules slightly since then to make it easier to make apps for teaching programming, but the goal was never to make generic dev environments. When I he…

it isn't really a local shell. As they describe it, it's an x86 interpreter, and therefore all of the code you run is sandboxed and isolated from the OS the same way as a Python interpreter would be. Python would let you make a network request, pull code down, and exec() it, so this doesn't really seem that different.

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#216

Post by jariel »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #160
jariel wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maybe it's because the very rules you say developers hate are the ones users find appealing." This is fairly easily disprovable by the mere existence of Android - which has a healthy app market place, tons of great apps and is for all intents and purposes, just as secure. Google Play does a fine job of promoting good apps, keeping bad ones out, and I can still go 'off network' and download my IT app or whatever that…

I think it’s more likely that Apple users are self selected to prefer the Apple App Store model, similar to the way Android users are self selected. The mere existence of those two markets doesn’t really tell us conclusively what users prefer. You would need to control for other factors, such as user income, demographics, etc etc.

It's borderline 'conclusive' because there is literally no material difference between 'security' on either system, ergo, it cannot be a material choice for 'selection'. Only the 'appearance' thereof.

Moreover, I really don't think Apple users in any conscious way are into this - I have never in my life heard a single user hint at this.

If you were to ask Apple users 'If you could have a bunch more apps right now, that you do not have because of Apple's closed model, and that having those apps would in no way affect the security or integrity of your device' - would they say yes?

Of course they would.

This is getting absurd - the 'restrictions' on Apple, while based on some degree of legitimacy, are also, unambiguously a vector for them to pursue leveraging the control they have on their platform to make money.

This isn't conspiratorial, my gosh, this is exactly the kind of position every business wants to be in, it's like the 'whole point'. They can milk their dominance and suck profits out of adjacent sectors and cover it with some other related policy? It's 'business gold'.

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#217

Post by imglorp »

josephcsible wrote: post #189
vosper wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple clearly does not want you to have a general-purpose computer Can you explain the existence of the MacBook, iMac, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro?

Give it a few more years. They're working on it. They've already done Gatekeeper, SIP, removal of kexts, making the root partition read-only every boot even if you turn off SIP, etc.

What was that little storm a few months back where they turned on code signature checking on shell scripts? One could just imagine the final step is you have to have a developer license to run your own code.

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#218

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

jsjohnst wrote: post #203
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it can be distributed through TestFlight Not for long. There was a post, a couple months ago, by a developer that was screaming about having his developer account permanently banned, because he was using TestFlight as his distribution system.

> Not for long. Considering iSH has been using TestFlight for 1-2 years and Apple is fully aware of them doing so, I don’t exactly agree with you.

Fair 'nuff. I'm surprised. I was not aware of the product before this posting.

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#219

Post by sbr464 »

ankushnarula wrote: post #118
nextos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad. I'm a Linux diehard, but during the pandemic I considered buying an iPad to SSH into my office workstation, browse the web, etc. as I got stuck in an awkward accommodation. Hardware is great, but the keyboard lacks a dedicated ESC, and I was quite uncomfortable with the fact that terminal apps seem like second rate citizens / not well liked by Apple. IMHO, there's a lot of untapped potential in the iPad as…

iPad keyboard support let’s you remap Caps Lock, CTRL, Cmd, Opt, and Globe key. I’ve remapped Caps Lock to Escape on both iPad Pro Magic Keyboard (and 2018 MacBook Pro 15). Works great in iSH, Shelly, and several other remoting apps.

Where are you remapping the keys reliably on an ipad? (app/settings)

Re: About iSH’s pending removal from the App Store

#220

Post by Someone »

userbinator wrote: post #158

Apple clearly does not want you to have a general-purpose computer: https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html Everything is done with "security" as an excuse because it's hard to argue against[1], but I think people are slowly starting to see through that. Apple wants to control every aspect of your life, and if you let it, it will. I wonder whether those who work at Apple and are responsible for doing such thi…

The general-purpose computer you’re referring to requires an administrator that makes security decisions and provides safer environments for users who don’t have the expertise to do the administration part, or don’t want to spend time on it.

One could describe what Apple sells “system administration as a service” (possibly even “network administration as a service”. They control what software can run on any phone in the iOS ‘network’). I don’t think that’s “wants to control every aspect of your life”. Their privacy stance seems to be at odds with that.

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