Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iOS 15 Humane

potential.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 496 posts

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#211

Post by simonh »

StavrosK wrote: post #194
p49k wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unrealistic. If it were easy to root an iPhone, then we would reach a situation where app developers would stop releasing necessary apps in the App Store because they want to bypass all the ethical behavior it requires. It would effectively force everyone to the lowest common denominator. If it were possible to root an iPhone, Facebook would have never agreed to give users the option to stop tracking them acr…

I don't know what to tell you if you believe that, while conversions drop off a cliff if the "signup" button isn't prominent, asking users to unlock their bootloader and install a third party app store just to get Facebook working on their phone is a thing that would get a nonzero amount of users.

It wouldn't just be facebook though, it would be all facebook's apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, etc), plus all Google's apps, Amazon, Fortnite, Spotify, etc, etc. A single 'Freedom' store with all that on it would have huge pull and would completely undermine the effectiveness of the App Store's privacy policies. No thanks.

This doesn't happen on Android because Google has no interest in enforcing strict privacy policies on the Play Store.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#212

Post by yadaeno »

If apple actually implemented these changes, I would ditch my current phone for an IPhone and never look back. I would also help make the switch for family members and anyone else I cared about.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#213

Post by tpm »

mosselman wrote: post #134
tpm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the kid will be given the iPhone and not the breadboard.

Where are the parents? Who is giving kids phone instead of something else? Also, why should kids tinker with computers if they can explore art by painting or music by learning an instrument or literature by reading? What makes it important for them to use Unix rather than something that works fine the way it is while maintaining some standard of UX? If kids show an interest in computers, they can just install unix on…

> Where are the parents? Who is giving kids phone instead of something else?

The parents might not know better.

> Also, why should kids tinker with computers if they can explore art by painting or music by learning an instrument or literature by reading?

They should be given the chance to do so, as they should be given the chance to explore art or craft or a lot of other things.

> What makes it important for them to use Unix

I don't see how mentioning Unix is relevant here. They should be given the opportunity to play and tinker with the devices, not only the preplanned path with games on the devices, that is all.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#214

Post by eecc »

StavrosK wrote: post #173
simonh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope, you're surreptitiously adding a righteous "the people will freely choose what suits them best" twist to the parent's post. That's a rich assumption, history proves that "the people" just want their shiny toy and will sheepishly accept whatever condition imposed by the manufacturer. Remember IE6?

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#215

Post by NeoVeles »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #96
Crazyontap wrote: post #49

Even though this article is sarcastic(?) I can't help but get genuinely angry at these trillion dollar companies thinking they know what is better for us and trying to control and police everything. This is even worse than govt censoring porn and cuss-words back in the day thinking they know what is moral for the society. I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple and Google are trying their best…

>I mean when I first got my 286 the machine was just full of possibilities. When I got my first 286 very little was available to me because it all had a cost. Want to learn C then get your wallet out to buy a C compiler. Want to learn Pascal then get your wallet out for Turbo Pascal . Want to learn UNIX, well hard lines, that stuff is only available in ivory towers.

The 286 was a little before my time, although I did spend a lot of time in the early 90's hacking on a 8086. It is always amazing to me that even in the 80's, Unix used to be considered an astoundingly heavy handed OS. Now with it legacy mostly living on via Linux, it is considered the light weight alternative. Funny the path these things take.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#216

Post by squiggleblaz »

plater wrote: post #175
vosper wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, t…

> 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.

Torvalds didn't create Linux as a teen in his bedroom hacking on what he had. He created it at university studying operating systems. He would have created it on Raspberry Pi or some other platform.

Linux is widely deployed on x86 because x86 is available and open enough. It replaced Unix operating systems on dedicated architectures, like Solaris on SPARC.

> 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

GNU/Linux was a hard sell in the beginning too. In the olden days, if you put Linux on a laptop you lost special features and you had very limited software support. Web pages were designed to work with IE only and you could only run Mozilla. Your major option for producing printable documents was special purpose programming languages like TeX or using Mozilla Composer. And good luck getting your winmodem/winprinter to do anything!

Today enough exists that you can buy hardware from companies that expect you to put Linux on them and then run them with full features and great intercompatibility. Your phone will be crap but it'll be good enough, and in ten years time it'll have a lot better features. Till then, if you want a great lowlight camera, buy a great lowlight camera.

The inversion of trust is a frustrating aspect of modern business, and it creates many social problems. But it isn't a technical barrier to oldschool hacking about.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#217

Post by p49k »

StavrosK wrote: post #210
p49k wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic literally did this with Fortnite on Android, one of the largest mobile games in existence - they taught users how to download the APK and sideload the app to avoid the Google Play store.

This isn't very relevant to the current discussion, though, as you don't need root or an unlocked bootloader on Android to do that.

It's directly relevant. It's an example of a large company forcing its users to learn how to implement a somewhat complicated bypass to an app store to avoid having to follow its rules, something that no one tries on Apple because of how tightly Apple controls its ecosystem.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#218

Post by the_gipsy »

Crazyontap wrote: post #49

Even though this article is sarcastic(?) I can't help but get genuinely angry at these trillion dollar companies thinking they know what is better for us and trying to control and police everything. This is even worse than govt censoring porn and cuss-words back in the day thinking they know what is moral for the society. I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple and Google are trying their best…

Exactly, I don't want to be at the mercy of a tech corporation to decide what's "healthy" for me or what exact degree of privacy I deserve.

Allow real browser extensions, I just want to be able to use uBlock origin. Not some overengineered "system extension" that can only check the network.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#219

Post by aembleton »

xmprt wrote: post #3

I really like the idea of having permissions for what kind of experience an app can show. For example, if Facebook had a way to disable infinite feeds and disable videos then I'd be more likely to use it on my phone (whereas right now, I never use it). We have permission settings for things like camera, microphone, and file system access. Why not go an extra step and add permissions on how apps take up our time.

To disable auto playing videos

In the Facebook app. Click the hamburger menu > Settings & Privacy > Mobile data usage > Tick 'Never Autoplay videos'

Yes, that applies to wifi too.

Re: iOS 15 Humane

#220

Post by StavrosK »

eecc wrote: post #214
StavrosK wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope, you're surreptitiously adding a righteous "the people will freely choose what suits them best" twist to the parent's post. That's a rich assumption, history proves that "the people" just want their shiny toy and will sheepishly accept whatever condition imposed by the manufacturer. Remember IE6?

Then people arguing this should stop being disingenuous that this is somehow about enabling user freedoms, and outright say "your phone should take away your choice because you can't be trusted with it" .
Post reply on HN