iOS 17 will reportedly set the stage for sideloading apps on iPhone • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by 015a » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

andruby wrote: post #186

jmull wrote: post #93

Having "side loading" -- also known as regular app installation on non-phone platforms -- hasn't caused chaos on desktop platforms or android. No reason to think it will on iOS either.

> hasn't caused chaos on desktop platforms I beg to differ. How many windows machines were infected in the early 2000's? Would bot-nets exist if Windows had a strict app store back then? Now: I will agree that freedom to install any software on desktops has been wonderful, and I hope it remains, but I wouldn't say it hasn't caused chaos.

> How many windows machines were infected in the early 2000's?

Great Scott. If you haven't looked at a calendar recently, its not 2001 anymore. The industry has spent the past 23 years improving the security of basically everything. Isolation is better. Filesystem security is better. Anti-virus is better. Browsers are more secure. Everything is more secure. Malware is still around. Its harder and harder for it to cause real damage, unless the user clicks past thirty five warnings.

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

#372

Post by rickdeckard » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #350

rickdeckard wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Are we talking about something like Amazon having a record of things I have purchased from Amazon? Or are we talking about Google buying a copy of my credit card transaction data? Because one of those is a perfectly normal part of any business relationship, and the other is absolutely not normal and not acceptable. I mean, Amazon stopped mailing receipts with line items of your purchases to Gmail customers because Go…

We talk about all of this, yes.

I'm not defending either of these practices, I'm asking how it is any different to what Apple does.

So Apple forcing all third parties on the iOS platform to use Apple's payments APIs to process payments and thus being able to track what you've purchased inside of any third party app they have nothing to do with, is that comparable to what Google does on the Gmail platform?

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

#373

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:49 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #261

nerdjon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES! And not just privacy but also shady practices around canceling and managing subscriptions and others. There is a very good reason I bought my parents iOS devices and the app store is the biggest one. Even as a technical person myself this is a big selling point for me to have an iPhone. Does it give a lot of control to apple and have they blocked some apps I wish they could allow, Yes! But I will take that over…

I'll respond to both of your comments here, since I think you're largely coming around to the same point. > the terms they would have to add to be competitive in this scenario would be "Developers can blatantly and horrendously mine all sensitive data from users." If they can do this as-is on iOS, that's the OS manufacturer's failure, not the failure of the store. Apple controls the runtime, they control what data ge…

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

#374

Post by kimmeld » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

Sideloading, otherwise known as installing software you want, on hardware you own.

Love how the term tries to make it sound so suspicious.

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

#375

Post by illiarian » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #244

scarface74 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They gave themselves an advantage and removed competitors for commercial reasons. Which competitor has been “removed”? > Regulate tightly what apple/google are allowed to do with their stores (e.g. like a common carrier) So there shouldn’t be any rules are quality controls on what should be allowed? > The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meanin…

The reality is simply that the EU is just not competitive in pretty much any of these industries. I'm actually struggling to think of any industry at all where EU has produced the market leaders.

> That’s the reason that it has such a thriving tech ecosystem.

By "market leaders" you mean the very many American companies fuelled by unlimited investor money that lose billions of dollars a year with no chance of ever turning a profit?

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

#376

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

yamtaddle wrote: post #337

kevviiinn wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>amount spent per user on software and computer services is far lower for Android But why does that matter in this context

An alt-store stands to capture more value on iOS than Android, and spying on iOS users is probably a whole lot more lucrative than spying on Android users. That, combined with the App Store restricting spying more than the Play Store does, is why we can't necessarily expect the iOS ecosystem to behave the same way as Android's, were iOS to get similar side-loading capabilities. A common argument goes that nothing wil…

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

#377

Post by phpisthebest » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

cronix wrote: post #221

rickdeckard wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, if it's available in the play store, why do I have to sideload it for Android?

Because Apple forced DJI to comply for their version, but since sideloading is available on Android as an alternative, they basically told Google to go pound sand. Edit: I misspoke in my original, which I fixed

I suspect as well the version is Android has features the iOS one does not due to limitation placed on it from the store, Issues they got around by simply removing it from the draconian store.

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

#378

Post by simion314 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

TexanFeller wrote: post #10

I'm dreading this. I want privacy hostile companies like Facebook to have to comply with the app store rules and respect system settings relating to privacy. As a user, I'm thrilled when Apple wields its big stick to stop big tech companies from overreaching. Before there was a bit of a compromise, I could use evil apps with some peace of mind that they wouldn't do something egregious. Now I suspect evil apps just wo…

No such thing really happened on Android. Facebook is still there.

But the opposite happened , apps were pushed out from the Store and if you are using iOS you are screwed but on Android you could decide to take the risk and side load the app from the official website. I just had to do this, I installed solar panels and they are made by Huawei, thx to USA-China wars , Huawei apps are no longer in google Play and Huawei phones do not contain Google Play support anymore (or last time I checked)

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

#379

Post by phpisthebest » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #348

kaba0 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 is no choice, that’s just ridiculous.

Network effects. Or do we really expect devs to write proper code for 3+ entirely different native mobile platforms?

If only there was a way of delivery applications using a uniform set of rules independent of any manufacturer or vendor..

hmm what would I call that.... A standard perhaps..

Then maybe we could make that same application work on several types of devices and form factors that simply run that standard via a web of devices

We could call them Web Apps... A Web App Standard....

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

#380

Post by kaba0 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #324

toast0 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

And they could close overnight from lack of millions of users.

Apple is not required to make it “download file and double click” easy, the best course for action would be making it relatively hard to enable so that no one’s grandma will be able to follow the instructions.