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iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

techcrunch.com

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Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#321

Post by yunwal »

brookst wrote: post #211
WaitWhatHuh wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I want privacy hostile companies like Facebook to have to comply with the app store rules and respect system settings relating to privacy. How about you spend 10 minutes looking at what Apple is actually doing and realize they are just as if not more "privacy hostile" as Facebook/Google/etc. They've been on a hiring spree since they announced their "privacy" update in 2020 to build out their own Ad Tech/DSP/Self Ser…

> they are just as if not more "privacy hostile" as Facebook/Google/etc You're going to have to back that up. Apple is degrading their privacy value prop for sure, but show me their Cambridge Analytica or their "Incognito mode" that still ties web activity back to user identity. > How is this good for privacy? That's a straw man. It is possible to believe that 1) Apple is curbing the worst excesses of abusers like Fa…

> This is a recurring theme on HN and I find it so strange. Are we really supposed to form opinions on what we imagine faceless committees motives are, rather than the actual corporate actions?

I’m unsure which side I fall on in this argument, since Apple has had an incredible run of customer-friendly decisions IMO (at least when compared to their competitors, and other near-monopolies). However, it’s important to learn from history too. Amazon was once one of the most revered brands in the world. They successfully priced out local shops and online retailers by stocking everything, having reliable and fast shipping, and good customer service.

But now look at them. Fake products and reviews everywhere, 2 day shipping is no longer a thing, they’re purposefully making returns more of a hassle, and people outside of major metropolitan areas no longer have other options for many things.

Companies with serious lock-in are bound to screw you eventually. Strong culture and product decisions can only last for so long until some minmaxer with no product vision or care for brand reputation starts calling the shots.

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#322

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

katbyte wrote: post #311
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use the Facebook app. I hardly ever use FB, anyway (I am an admin on a user group for an OSS project I authored), but their app is a well-known nightmare. I use their Web interface, which, I suspect, they deliberately cripple, in order to try forcing me to use their app.

I wanted to check fb messenger on my phone for a marketplace thing so I logged into the website: wouldn’t let you look/ pushed you to the app and I couldn’t flip it into desktop mode

Yeah, I was forced to install Messenger. It sucks.

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#323

Post by tristor »

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm exactly the type of person who used to jailbreak my iPhone to run Cydia, and I used to build my own custom Android ROMs and spend hours on XDA-Developers before that. Now though, I appreciate how locked down iPhones are, and I keep it as locked down via Apple Configurator as possible, because the mobile web and mobile application space are fraught with peril. The vast majority of mobile apps are net-negative experiences unless it's a companion app to an in-person service (e.g. restaurant/airline/hotel/bank), and even those are often risky. If you look at the Android ecosystem, the Google Play Store is basically a ghetto where the lowest common denominator criminal gangs operate malware at scale with impunity, and Apple has been a haven away from this.

I went through a lot of effort to switch my elderly parents into the Apple ecosystem, and since doing so I have been able to have a lot less support required and to sleep easy at night. With sideloading coming, I am not longer certain that their devices are safe and they won't be tricked into putting malware on the device.

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#324

Post by judge2020 »

toast0 wrote: post #218
mort96 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when the apps which used to be available on the app store get taken down and made sideload-only, like what Epic did with Fortnite on Android?

If you don't want to sideload, then don't. If companies don't want to be on the platform app store anymore, it's not the end of the world. I ran a windows phone for several years; if there's no app for something, there's usually a website, and Safari is loads more usable than mobile IE or mobile Edge; so you're fine for the most part. Yeah, you might lose out on playing FPS games on your phone, but is that really a l…

The net loss is to society when Meta pulls Instagram from the official store and says "to continue using Instagram, go to instagram.com in safari and follow the instructions".

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#325

Post by kaba0 »

mrcode007 wrote: post #131
nightski wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are doing no such thing. You don't have to use side loaded apps. If a company decides to only distribute from side loading, you can just not use their app. This is effectively what you are forcing on people who would prefer side loading, so it shouldn't be a problem for you.

This will be the biggest future exploit vector. “Your phone is infected. Click here to load our antivirus”

If they make it like android’s dev mode, no one on Earth who shouldn’t will enable it.

The people whom for such exploits would be dangerous won’t be able to follow the 6 steps to enable them.

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#326

Post by kevviiinn »

yamtaddle wrote: post #313
wkat4242 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is a much bigger market worldwide. Only in the US and a few other rich places Apple is still the #1.

User count, yes. Expected value per user, and amount spent per user on software and computer services is far lower for Android, even if we only look at the US. That, combined with the relative ease of supporting a couple iOS versions on a handful of devices versus a whole universe of Android OS-device combos, is why a lot of apps go iOS-first if they're not doing dual-platform from day 1. The benefit for most monetiz…

>amount spent per user on software and computer services is far lower for Android

But why does that matter in this context

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#327

Post by judge2020 »

TingPing wrote: post #256
vsareto wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As dumb as it sounds, I'd buy a second phone for side loading things if I needed to use enough of those apps. Before side loading on my personal phone, I'd want enough real world time to pass to make sure it's not easy to find vulnerabilities that lead to a complete compromise by side loading (they will be found, but it needs to be "zero-click text message for root" levels of rarity).

They are still going to be sandboxes, regular permissioned, apps. Nothing changes for most apps except they get a 100% cut of in-app sales.

And can put up a banner that says "Sorry - to improve your experience, you must enable 'always' location tracking".

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#328

Post by kevviiinn »

jjeaff wrote: post #306
wkat4242 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is a much bigger market worldwide. Only in the US and a few other rich places Apple is still the #1.

Only by user count. Last I checked, apple's worldwide app store revenue was nearly 10x that of Google's app store revenue.

So are malware vendors looking for who spends the most on software or for biggest impact through sheer number of installations

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#329

Post by jimmydddd »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #263
yamtaddle wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spend more, and use their devices a lot more , both Web and Apps. At least, last time I looked at market research data like this, which was admittedly 4-5 years ago.

Something that I think is often not considered when thinking about mobile device usage stats is the proportions of types of users the market is comprised of. While I don't have any links to back the idea up, I suspect that Android's marketshare is somewhat inflated by users who'd normally be using feature phones — these users don't need anything more than the ability to make cell calls and maybe text occasionally, an…

Agree with the user base portions. My parents (in their 80's) each have 3 android phones because my dad keeps buying them for some reason. We never know which of their phones/features are currently active. My mom wasn't getting my texts and we just figured out that she doesn't have texting enabled. Not sure if it's a setting or that my dad picked a 90 day phone plan without text support. :-)

Re: iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone

#330

Post by rickdeckard »

GeekyBear wrote: post #282
rickdeckard wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. When Apple tried "Premium Advertising" without sharing any Personas 10 years ago, it failed as it was expensive and didn't allow targeted marketing. In the meantime Meta learnt that they can't allow others to extract their precious userdata and need to protect their position by clustering data into Personas for advertisers to select from. Now Apple reenters the ad-business, using the very same scheme as…

> If people consider Meta/Google's practice as spying Maintaining shadow profiles on people who aren't even customers and buying user data from third parties isn't spying on people? Again, it's not the part where you sell ads that is problematic.

Agreed. But USING data of your transactions and your third party apps to refine your profile is not spying?

Both is done for the sake of understanding who you are in order to sell ads to you.

Is one "spying" and the other "a little bit of spying"?

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