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iOS 15 Humane

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Re: iOS 15 Humane

#171

Post by simonh »

StavrosK wrote: post #150
khazhoux wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally have both, and more. Right now, I have a nearly uncrackable walled-garden iphone on my desk. And a mac laptop running XCode (learning about Metal programming), and at the same time running an Amiga emulator (tinkering with 68k assembly), and a windows gaming laptop next to it, and a breadboard on the floor with a pile of resistors and capacitors and transistors. So what's the problem again?

The problem is that there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be able to disable your iPhone's security and mess around with it if that's what you want. Apple owns the device, not you.

Yes there is. I don't want Facebook or Google to move all their apps to side loading or an alternate store with lax controls and opaque privacy disclosure. I need to use their apps, but I want them to have to satisfy Apple's app store policies. Side landing and alternate stores would cripple the effectiveness of those policies.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#172

Post by murrayhenson »

gwd wrote: post #155
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #39

Such a complicated solution. Here's a much simpler one: Stop using Facebook. Problem solved.

How do I keep contact with relatives -- like cousins, aunts and uncles, etc -- who I care enough about to want to chat with / see what's up in their lives, but not enough to call on a weekly basis?

iCloud photo sharing? Works with people that do and do not have iPhones/Macs. At least I know that non-Apple users can see photos in a shared album; I don't know if they can add photos to a shared photo album as well - I've never tried that.

Several years ago I got tired for Facebook and quit it. My parents, in-laws, and siblings have an Apple shared photo album for "general" content and we occasionally set up albums for the same group of folks when there's a big event/trip/etc.

We occasionally Facetime or use chat via Messages. Email's are in the mix as well.

I feel that it works reasonably well.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#173

Post by StavrosK »

simonh wrote: post #171
StavrosK wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be able to disable your iPhone's security and mess around with it if that's what you want. Apple owns the device, not you.

Yes there is. I don't want Facebook or Google to move all their apps to side loading or an alternate store with lax controls and opaque privacy disclosure. I need to use their apps, but I want them to have to satisfy Apple's app store policies. Side landing and alternate stores would cripple the effectiveness of those policies.

So the reasoning is "if you allow my phone to be unlocked, so many people will want alternate stores that Facebook and Google will unlist their apps from the App Store and use the alternative stores only, and then they won't be as rigorously reviewed"?

Like how you can't get Facebook on the Play Store because it's only available on F-droid on Android, for example?

That's certainly... interesting.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#174

Post by dionidium »

I went into this pretty skeptical, but by the end I was convinced that this is a good endeavor. For example, batching notifications for certain kinds of apps is a truly great idea. I don’t agree with every suggestion here, but it’s clear to me that thinking about these issues could lead to some more good ideas.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#175

Post by plater »

vosper wrote: post #157
_Understated_ wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about having choice: Microsoft used to be quite good at making stuff usable but the underlying geekery was still there and could allow control to the max if you wanted it. It worked for mom & pops and techs alike but corporations new attitude of "We'll decide what's best and remove other options" is a bloody pain in the arse now. A particularly bad one is this insistence on not allowing me to permanently say "no…

> Microsoft used to be quite good at making stuff usable but the underlying geekery was still there and could allow control to the max if you wanted it. Windows 10 is the best Windows ever for the vast majority of people who use Windows. Same with Office. But you can still install whatever software you want on your Windows machine. Explain to me again how this is worse than what we used to have; where Microsoft have…

Yes, because it's based on a PC. A quite standard and open specification where you can buy motherboards, CPU, RAM, disk, IO peripherals etc from many different manufacturers and build and install what software you want. However, on a Mac, you cannot install or change the hardware as you like, you cannot install what software you want.

If Linus Torvalds was a teen today and there was no open PC standard, only a Mac, then it would not have been possible to create Linux the way it is today.

Imagine if also Microsoft starts to make their own processors and then sell their own computers with Windows and all locked down, and don't allow anyone else to make computers with Windows or their processors.

Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based on Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell.

The PC's sold to the mainstream thanks to Windows/Word/Excel maybe, but then people who wanted could tinker as much as they wanted and where free so make and sell their software (windows based or whatever) or their HW peripherals.

Now you are at best stuck within an app store if you create something.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#176

Post by fumblebee »

A lot of commenters are hating on the article -- I fail to see why. Whether all the ideas are good or not is up for debate, but putting control in the hands of users for combatting dark patterns and dampening addictive habits at source is only a good thing. During the pandemic I've seen my daily phone usage soar, I wish I had some form of iOS 15 Humane.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#177

Post by fauigerzigerk »

khazhoux wrote: post #93
CraigJPerry wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. Why can’t we have both? Why can’t we have devices that permit “mucking about” but also when configured appropriately allow us to ignore the low level details and muck about with higher level stuff? They don’t have to be mutually exclusive despite “bt whole home wifi app has detected this is a jailbroken device and for your safety will not run”. It’s my wifi, it’s my phone!

You literally have both, and more. Right now, I have a nearly uncrackable walled-garden iphone on my desk. And a mac laptop running XCode (learning about Metal programming), and at the same time running an Amiga emulator (tinkering with 68k assembly), and a windows gaming laptop next to it, and a breadboard on the floor with a pile of resistors and capacitors and transistors. So what's the problem again?

>You literally have both, and more

I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get exactly one device. Some have to share it with their siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our most widely used devices are completely locked down or not.

It doesn't just matter for kids either. It also matters for democracy how many people only own devices that governments have complete control over.

That said, I do think the problem can be exaggerated. People tend to find ways around restrictions. It can even be a motivation for looking more deeply into how things work.

And not all of those workarounds are terribly expensive. Ironically, the most expensive devices are also the most locked down.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#178

Post by cout »

toomanyducks wrote: post #163
spython wrote: post #149

The article wants Apple to save us from mindless browsing, but I see mindless browsing as unavoidable. Not because of some technical or legal thing, but because mindless browsing is a good thing. We need it. Mindless browsing is like a walk through the woods, just looking for what is happening, navigating a huge amount of information that is hardly important at the moment – oh, the cherry tree is blooming – but could…

It's well past midnight, I've been interacting with apps designed to maximize 'user engagement' since 8 PM. I don't have coherent thoughts, I'm opening irrelevant tabs habitually. This is not healthy. I have a problem. That problem is mindless browsing, and it feels engineered. Not saying you're wrong, just that your ideas don't work for me.

I did the same thing for years, mindlessly browsing well past a sane hour. What changed is I started going to bed early and getting up early, before the sun rises. I still browse mindlessly on occasion, but my after-coffee morning browsing is a lot more directed than my drowsy evening browsing.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#179

Post by pedalpete »

I wonder if there is an opportunity for an open consortium of apps that could define guidelines and qualify apps that are built with positive impact on the user in mind.

We've recently been discussing how we can be proactive with our user's data, and tell them why we want to use their data, what data, and for how long we'll use it, etc. Because we're likely using the data in health and wellness research, it's not just "hey we want to show you better ads", so we believe there is real benefit to the user here.

Does such a consortium exist? Should one?

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#180

Post by aks_tldr »

fsflover wrote: post #146
p49k wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s approach is pragmatic. If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security, payment restrictions or similar. Even the limited options Apple provides are already abused, such as Facebook convincing users to install VPN profiles with their Ovano product and abusing it to spy on users. Having the option defeats the…

> If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all the freedoms. Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories. Apple has countless problems with security and privacy in their App Store.

That is because Linux is not used by general public.
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