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Avoid the Apple App Store

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Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#211

Post by pmarreck »

chaosharmonic wrote: post #210
pmarreck wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blatant anti competitive behavior apple acting self-interested (which it’s entirely justified in doing, IMHO; this is the same company that almost had a tragic death in the 90’s) just opens up more competition IMHO. it’s too bad that true open-source phones are still crap, that android gave too much power to the cell network providers and became bloatware vehicles, and that microsoft completely abandoned its phone…

> Also blue texts Not that Google has an attention span here (I'm still annoyed at them for what they did to XMPP), but RCS exists, and Apple is perfectly capable of at least supporting a fallback spec written this century. Their choice to instead just actively degrade the messaging experience, for everyone involved, when any one involved isn't their customer, makes the entire market worse . See also: Safari

Apple absolutely has zero incentive to support RCS as a fallback. Not only that, it's not only been inconsistently supported by Google despite existing for... decades, now?... but isn't even supported by all carriers!

https://www.androidauthority.com/rcs-google-3090142/

> In a word, RCS is like SMS, but better. Except that it isn’t. Not every operator has enabled it yet. Not all phones support it. Not every implementation is the same — especially in terms of encryption since that bit is optional. And even if you download Google Messages and use the now-supposedly worldwide ‘Chat features’ there, you’re still at the mercy of Google’s servers which can go down or become buggy any time. Which they have done rather frequently.

> RCS is also completely reliant on your phone number being active when you send or receive messages (note: Apple stores iMessages for some time offline). This makes it intricately linked to your carrier bill (h/t Ron Amadeo for bringing this into the discussion). If you happen to miss a payment or have an issue with your carrier, or if you live in a country where number portability is difficult or nonexistent, your line goes down and so does your ability to use SMS and RCS. This is unlike IP-based chat services where you can connect back at any point in the future, get all of your pending messages, and continue where you left off.

Google probably guessed (which was reasonable) that an app like Whatsapp would come along and handle this market... which wasn't entirely false... but instead it's been fractured across many apps like Whatsapp instead of having a unified feature set (such as iMessages', such as: end to end encryption, reactions, high resolution photos and videos and livephotos, voice texts, offline storage of messages until devices come back online, smooth transition to a high resolution audio or video chat (Facetime Audio or Facetime), etc.) And Whatsapp STILL doesn't have features I'd consider basic at this point, like Tapbacks: https://www.engadget.com/google-messages-android-imessage-re...

So now Google is realizing that this was a mistake (perhaps due to the unexpected "luxury appearance" of "blue-message cachet") and is NOW pushing hard for RCS... too little, too late IMHO.

As an iPhone user, my messaging is currently scattered across: mostly iMessage, but some Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger (and a smattering of others now and then like Signal). The advantage of the top 3 of those for me is that I can also send and receive them from my laptop... something that RCS also DOES NOT provide. In last place behind all of these we have SMS messages from Android users, where messaging is less reliable (I have literally gotten into fights with people due to missed messages!!), sending a photo along with text either fails or downsamples the photo to a thumbnail, etc. etc. etc. At least I can send and receive SMS to Androids from my laptop in iMessages, through my phone when it is nearby.

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#212

Post by tpmoney »

Apocryphon wrote: post #208
FalconSensei wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do you prevent the users from thinking the problem was the non-App Store content instead of an update? They ARE going to contact support anyway

Simply, if you enable sideloading/downloading from non App Store, you make it very visible in the UX that you are essentially in a "non-safe mode" (the actual security status probably varies, but Apple would probably go out of its way to hype up the potential of danger here), and you consent to all sorts of disclaimers disavowing Apple's responsibility here, and recommending they make backups before doing so. In fact…

Way back when apple first released boot camp for the intel macs, I worked retail. A customer came in one day fuming mad and demanding a refund of their new MacBook. They described a series of issues they’d been having for the past month, some of which were known issues that were addressed with a firmware update months earlier and some of which sounded like nothing that should be able to happen in OS X at all.

After some taking the customer allowed us to take a look at things before we did the refund. It turned out her nephew, whom she had turned to for help setting up her new computer decided for her that she didn’t need a mac, she needed a mac running windows. He had resized the Mac OS partition to as small as it would go, installed windows and configured boot camp to boot entirely into windows. As a result all the problems she’d had under windows remained (made worse by not having antivirus because “macs don’t need antivirus”) and she never got any of the firmware updates because Mac OS was never booted and never checked the update servers.

Boot camp was an involved process at the time, with plenty of scary warnings and no official support at all. But the end user never even saw them because the “tech” person in their lives just set it up anyway.

The result of this was a few hours of employee time and and out of policy assurance of return long after the normal return policy if the customer still wasn’t happy trying the proper Mac and Mac OS experience for a while.

No amount of disclaimers, not taking responsibility or sign tapping would have gotten a better response, and not taking that responsibility even though Apple explicitly disclaimed responsibility would have resulted in brand damage, costs in terms of returns and restocking and the loss of future sales that (later happy) customer represented.

In the end, customers aren’t impressed with your signs and disclaimers. If apple is the product vendor, they will demand apple fixes it.

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#213

Post by Apocryphon »

tpmoney wrote: post #212
Apocryphon wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply, if you enable sideloading/downloading from non App Store, you make it very visible in the UX that you are essentially in a "non-safe mode" (the actual security status probably varies, but Apple would probably go out of its way to hype up the potential of danger here), and you consent to all sorts of disclaimers disavowing Apple's responsibility here, and recommending they make backups before doing so. In fact…

Way back when apple first released boot camp for the intel macs, I worked retail. A customer came in one day fuming mad and demanding a refund of their new MacBook. They described a series of issues they’d been having for the past month, some of which were known issues that were addressed with a firmware update months earlier and some of which sounded like nothing that should be able to happen in OS X at all. After s…

That's fair, but it would seem that the entire set of problems related to Boot Camp have since gone away over time, and Apple's brand has been no worse for wear. (Though I'm not even sure how widespread Windows on Mac use is these days, and the Apple Silicon licensing issues would seem to pose a threat to that continued use. Yet I haven't seen any urgent fears about that lack of support.)

At some point you're just going to have to expect users to grow and learn alongside the platform.

Edit: I should also note that Apple is perfectly fine with taking credit, as product vendor, for content that they are hosting on one of their apps, but not actually producing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30191126

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-podcasts/id525463029

2nd Edit:

> No amount of disclaimers, not taking responsibility or sign tapping

I've also wondered about that. Apple is a master of UX patterns. The whole green vs. blue message bubbles alone has become a social/cultural signifier. Let's say the UX was similarly tweaked if a user had sideloading enabled, maybe an unsightly header. If there were similar color filters or distinguishing UI that specified installed apps as not from the App Store. Wouldn't that be enough to create user behavior to distinguish between "official" App Store apps and sideloaded ones? Emergent behavior will arise from simple prodding. The green/blue division is real.

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#214

Post by pmarreck »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #205
pmarreck wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blatant anti competitive behavior apple acting self-interested (which it’s entirely justified in doing, IMHO; this is the same company that almost had a tragic death in the 90’s) just opens up more competition IMHO. it’s too bad that true open-source phones are still crap, that android gave too much power to the cell network providers and became bloatware vehicles, and that microsoft completely abandoned its phone…

What does their near death experience of the 1990s have to do with today? Is anyone in leadership from that era even working there now?

Tim Cook's been at Apple since 1998. Apple's near-death was in 1997. Tim's overseen basically the entire rise from bottom to top. Craig Federighi joined in 1996, was there for the bottom of the barrel, left for a time but then returned. But yes, Jobs essentially died in the meantime of misinformation/baseless-beliefs, and Jony Ive has moved on (but he was there since 1992 up until recently). Phil Schiller's been at Apple since, wow, 1987, and Eddy Cue since 1989.

So yeah, I'd say there's quite a few long-time Apple execs who have been there through the thick and the thin. More power to them. Know who else has stuck with them even longer than them? Me. Been an Apple guy since I was 12 in December 1984, when my otherwise-frugal fam got the Macintosh 128k. ;) In 1997 I was doing part-time work as a mainly-Mac computer consultant on the side (while serving in the USAF) and things were DIRE for any Apple believer. But anyway, bygone days.

https://www.apple.com/leadership/

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#215

Post by brightball »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #134
brightball wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I still can’t find several games that I purchased before simply because they are no longer in the App Store. There was a really solid iOS version of Final Fantasy VI/III, almost the entire catalog of games from Origin8 seems to be missing too. Would love to get them again but can’t for some reason.

> There was a really solid iOS version of Final Fantasy VI/III Square stopped selling those in anticipation of upcoming remastered versions, but if you already bought them you can still download and install them, you can find them in "Purchased" in the App Store

Thanks for the tip

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#216

Post by bastardoperator »

mistersquid wrote: post #165
bastardoperator wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you hate Apple more than Apple hates me. Your boogieman analogy is over the top or laughable. Also: bash --version GNU bash, version 5.1.16(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin21.1.0)

You may be running non-standard bash. In macOS Monterey 12.2.1: ┍ … Thu Feb 17 09:09:44[~] ┕ which bash /bin/bash ┍ … Thu Feb 17 09:10:25[~] ┕ bash --version GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin21) Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

I absolutely do. I want some parity with Linux so I also install gnu coreutils via brew and alias with bashrc.

  which bash
  /usr/local/bin/bash

  which ls
  /usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin/ls

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#217

Post by chaosharmonic »

pmarreck wrote: post #211
chaosharmonic wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also blue texts Not that Google has an attention span here (I'm still annoyed at them for what they did to XMPP), but RCS exists, and Apple is perfectly capable of at least supporting a fallback spec written this century. Their choice to instead just actively degrade the messaging experience, for everyone involved, when any one involved isn't their customer, makes the entire market worse . See also: Safari

Apple absolutely has zero incentive to support RCS as a fallback. Not only that, it's not only been inconsistently supported by Google despite existing for... decades, now?... but isn't even supported by all carriers! https://www.androidauthority.com/rcs-google-3090142/ > In a word, RCS is like SMS, but better. Except that it isn’t. Not every operator has enabled it yet. Not all phones support it. Not every implement…

So to be clear I generally agree w Amadeo's point, as I'd much rather see every chat network built on top of phone numbers die out like the widespread use of ICQ. Personally I'm much more interested in seeing something like Matrix take hold, because to me a Web-based model, with some sort of user@site identifier and, incidentally, the ability to deploy one yourself, are non-negotiables for anything I adopt as a primary communication spec in the future.

But this isn't about the use of Web-based services, this is about a text client. That's not going to just disappear anytime in the near future, it isn't reasonable to compare them to better chat networks when we're specifically talking about fallbacks, and whether they have incentive to implement a standard for it doesn't mean they should just have free reign to promote ecosystem lock-in for the basic functionality of a phone.

And do I also agree that the implementation of RCS has been less than stellar, but that's in part because of fragmented adoption among vendors, which is a problem that Apple is a part of.

(And speaking of ways that markets are worse because they don't have "incentives" to adopt standards, I forgot to mention their continued use of Lightning.)

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#218

Post by drewolbrich »

andjd wrote: post #68
drewolbrich wrote: post #9

Is it possible it was rejected because it's called Wörd which is too close to Wordle? Try naming it something else and resubmitting.

Like "Wurdle" which did get through?

I'm proposing why Wörd might have been rejected, not suggesting that the App Store review process is perfectly consistent.

The App Store reviewers are people, and some of them follow the rules more strictly than others. Perhaps Wurdle passed review because it got lucky and was paired with a permissive reviewer, or a reviewer who happened to be unaware of Wordle.

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#219

Post by nradov »

sleepybrett wrote: post #203
dawnbreez wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Begging the question, what part of the Apple app store prevents a bricked phone, and why would that not be a feature of non-Apple stores?

Part of their app review process is static analysis and determining if you are using any of the 'private' parts of their apis. Another app store might decide that they don't care to do that level of work and just rubber stamp everything that comes into their queue.

Perhaps then Apple should simply block all user installed apps from using any API that can brick a device.

Re: Avoid the Apple App Store

#220

Post by vinceguidry »

bastardoperator wrote: post #216
mistersquid wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be running non-standard bash. In macOS Monterey 12.2.1: ┍ … Thu Feb 17 09:09:44[~] ┕ which bash /bin/bash ┍ … Thu Feb 17 09:10:25[~] ┕ bash --version GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin21) Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

I absolutely do. I want some parity with Linux so I also install gnu coreutils via brew and alias with bashrc. which bash /usr/local/bin/bash which ls /usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin/ls

Or, hear me out here, maybe just run Linux. Your life can be very simple and easy without having your system subjected to Apple's caprice.

Imagine it, a system that you, and only you, control.

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