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iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

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Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#441
post #85

I wonder if they considered an "iPhone Europe Edition" - USB-C, side loading, physical SIM cards. Sounds like a good phone!

What’s good about physical SIMs? I do like apple for daring to improve the status quo there, so I want my European Edition with only e-simsz

If you travel to more than 1 or 2 countries per year, especially less developed countries, you'll learn that your life (connection) depends on picking up cheap $5-15 sim cards at the border for each country.

I couldn't imagine them jumping on the esim train in any useful way in the near term.

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#442

Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this. There is a great tool to increase security: the browser and its sandbox. You don't need to install anything fishy on your phone, and the sandbox rights coukd be sufficient for many apps. But as an example, Apple denies the full screen feature for websites and even PWA... only installed on…

Users don’t want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows the platform UI conventions. It’s good that Apple care enough about about UX to actually enforce this.

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#443
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm concerned if you 'bought' something, it should be yours to do as you please, including reselling and destroying it. If you didn't buy something, but rented it - for example a game on Steam or Epic Games store - then it should damned say so. It's a straight up lie to say you purchased something if you didn't.

If we were being very pedantic, what would you say is the test of ownership? If you buy an iPhone you can sell it or destroy it, so it meets those requirements of ownership. You can't destroy something you're renting, so you clearly aren't renting an iPhone. How would I know if I own a device or not? If you buy an iPhone, but don't think you own it. Why don't you think you own it? If your response is "because I can't…

Property law has been deep on all the various aspects of ownership for millenia, so there's a big "bundle of rights" which any specific type of ownership may or may not have.

One test for "full ownership" is the contractual restrictions that come attached; i.e. whether the law is the only thing that limits what you can do with the thing, or whether there are some extra conditions (which are not that rare in e.g. real estate deals for as long as we have recorded history); that's generally considered ownership but a restricted one. On the other hand, if you aren't prohibited to do that thing but simply aren't capable of doing it, that would still be considered unrestricted ownership.

But something that is a key part of ownership - especially with respect to various "buying" of e.g. games - is the ability to transfer it to others. If you can't give or sell the thing you've purchased to someone else, that clearly indicates that you don't own it.

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#444
post #442

Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this. There is a great tool to increase security: the browser and its sandbox. You don't need to install anything fishy on your phone, and the sandbox rights coukd be sufficient for many apps. But as an example, Apple denies the full screen feature for websites and even PWA... only installed on…

Users don’t want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows the platform UI conventions. It’s good that Apple care enough about about UX to actually enforce this.

If they want it, download the app then. Allow others to not download it and use a PWA if they'd like.

Actually I believe you're wrong: if people actually preferred Apple's way of doing it, Apple would have no reason to restrict other ways.

They restrict it because people prefer the other way, and that would harm Apple's profits.

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#445
post #127
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. As a dev, if I list my $3/mo subscription app on the Apple App store and they take 30% and I have 100k customers and I double-list the app in the 3rd party store + the Apple app store and gain 20k customers from the 3rd party store and the 3rd party store charges 10%, I have saved (30% - 10%) x 20k x $3/mo = $12k/mo on the new customers. If I release my next version update and post it to just the 3rd party a…

I don't think that's a problem for Apple: - For figurative developer moving 120k customers saves $72k/mo - For figurative customers on $3/mo subscription it means ~$0.65/mo savings - Such scenario doesn't take into account amount of work required for switch (5 minutes of form filling on $15/h is $2.5 - gain starts at 6th month) - Neither it does UX around subscription management (right now it's very comfortable to ma…

Just extending the hypothetical, the developer can drop the price to $2.49/mo passing on the savings to customers and perhaps capture a few more customers at that price point.

While it is true that inertia might stop many customers from changing the default, it does give an additional degree of freedom for devs.

Also, in price conscious geographies like India (where Apple just launched their first two retail stores this past week), we have alternate payment mechanisms like UPI (Unified Payment Interface) that are zero cost. So, why should a dev be forced to use only the payment mechanisms offered by Apple?

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Installing applications on your computer is the normal state of things. It really wasn't. It wasn't normal to install arbitrary applications on the computers in your fridge, dishwasher, game consoles, flip phones, washing machines, etc. Platforms have varied over time in how open they are to having other people developing for them. iOS is an example of a more closed platform and has shown that closed platforms can b…

> iOS is an example of a more closed platform and has shown that closed platforms can be successful. It is successful despite being closed, not because of it.

Do you have any evidence backing this idea? It is reasonable to believe that the closed platform allowed for the platform to be more trust worthy making it grow faster due to more people seeing it as a platform they can trust. Or maybe an open platform would have led to mass piracy of apps meaning there is less motivation for developers to make apps.

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#447
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm concerned if you 'bought' something, it should be yours to do as you please, including reselling and destroying it. If you didn't buy something, but rented it - for example a game on Steam or Epic Games store - then it should damned say so. It's a straight up lie to say you purchased something if you didn't.

If we were being very pedantic, what would you say is the test of ownership? If you buy an iPhone you can sell it or destroy it, so it meets those requirements of ownership. You can't destroy something you're renting, so you clearly aren't renting an iPhone. How would I know if I own a device or not? If you buy an iPhone, but don't think you own it. Why don't you think you own it? If your response is "because I can't…

> If we were being very pedantic, what would you say is the test of ownership?

Here's the concept of ownership for private property in German Law. It's broadly defined as 1) Exclusive Rights, 2) Transferability, 3) Protection against Unlawful Interference, 4) Compensation for Expropriation and 5) Inheritance and Succession.

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#448
post #85

I wonder if they considered an "iPhone Europe Edition" - USB-C, side loading, physical SIM cards. Sounds like a good phone!

What’s good about physical SIMs? I do like apple for daring to improve the status quo there, so I want my European Edition with only e-simsz

I know nothing about esims, what makes them so much better than a physical sim? I can't say I have any major qualms with what I have right now, I just shove it in my phone and forget about it.

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also pretty confident that if apple and their services disappeared tomorrow, my iphone would keep on working just like it does today. Sure, no more updates, no more new apps, it would be frozen in the state it's in. You can hardly call that "working like it does today". It doesn't. When features on it inevitably cease to work or be interoperable, you're screwed. And every day, you're probably more vulnerable to…

>If I buy a house, I can learn to maintain it and keep it secured. I can't do that with my iPhone. For the argument's sake, your ability to do things to your own house is restricted by zoning, by HOA and god forbid you from buying something of historical significance in Europe -- then you can't change anything inside or outside and you are responsible for it.

I think it's important to make a distinction between the restrictions imposed by law and restrictions imposed by the seller.

For pretty much every thing there are restrictions on what you can do with it - if I buy a phone, I'm prohibited from smashing it into my neighbour's face, and grinding it up and baking into the cookies I sell would be a violation of health&safety rules, but that's still full ownership.

Now, if the seller wants to impose extra restrictions above and beyond what the general society does, that's a different issue.

Re: iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Installing applications on your computer is the normal state of things. It really wasn't. It wasn't normal to install arbitrary applications on the computers in your fridge, dishwasher, game consoles, flip phones, washing machines, etc. Platforms have varied over time in how open they are to having other people developing for them. iOS is an example of a more closed platform and has shown that closed platforms can b…

The question is which of these is a general purpose computer and which isn't. IMHO if what people tend to do on a platform is the same as what they do on a PC then that platform should also be forced to be a general-purposed computer and allow (in some roundabout way) arbitrary application installation. For example, a smartphone replaces a PC for a lot of people. I even know some people in their 20s that don't own a…

What is your definition of "general purpose computer." I would disagree that PCs should allow for arbitrary application installs. Take for example chromebooks. They are one of the most secure PCs out there partly due to not allowing arbitrary apps to be installed.
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