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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

#991
post #869
post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me example of a thing that would prove it. EU has tons of regulation on cars(most of manufacturers are EU based) - ask any car manufacturer how easy it is to get a car sold in EU(not saying that tons of regulation is good or that difficulty of producing is good, but it is an example that goes well against your argument).

There is an argument that companies in mature sectors (like automobiles) advocate for increased regulation as a moat to keep competitors out since building a mechanism to comply is extremely expensive for new entrants.

Well, yeah but your definition is also kinda recursive "mature" sector is a regulated sector. Well restaurant schtick to me is way more mature if we stick to original vibe.

The thing is most regulation is happening where people actually get hurt. Hey, I am not super pro regulation person, but in comment above, I just tried to disprove something that seemed false. I am not going steelman pro-regulation arguments any more :)

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

#992

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They add another common standard, probably allowing manufacturers to choose between "old" and "new" for a little while. Similar to the switch from microUSB-B to USB-C. Budget phones kept using the cheap option for awhile, but eventually costs came down and people settled into the new standard. Not sure how it's done in the EU, but their legislature could delegate authority to make such decisions to an executive agenc…

I don’t know why everybody trusts government bodies to act fast and delegate authority as needed when it’s clearly not how things happen in the real world. The nature of government is to be slow, safe and long-term, not enable technological disruption. For example the cookie law has made most websites significantly less enjoyable and everybody hates it and yet it has been stuck for years, no hope of improvement in si…

Exactly, standards should be durable and predictable. They need slow, lumbering curators.

When it comes to overbroad laws like the cookies thing, lazy malicious adherence is the name of the game. Simply block JavaScript from domains like "cookielaw.org", and you'll never see the dialogs.

Is it legal that the website doesn't ask for your consent if you block random third parties from executing code on your machine? Who cares!

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

#993
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrongly assumed that zero days are single-use. Pegasus used the same exploits in dozens or hundreds of targets.

I didn't assume that at all - that's why I specified a never-before-seen vulnerability.

"seen" could not be true until after thousands are hacked.

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

#994

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you would need to somehow get in touch with said carrier. Granted, you could probably do that over WiFi but if my phone breaks when, say, I'm out camping I'm SoL.

In the UK most carriers also offer printed QR codes for the eSIM. These can be scanned more than once to activate it. So you can store that somewhere and scan it on another phone.

What happens if you scan it twice on two phones at the same time?

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

#995
post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Apple should have to call it “Subscribe to iPhone “ or “Gain admission to iPhone” or “Use iPhone” - but not “Buy iPhone” as they very much do. If you buy a piece of hardware, you buy a piece of hardware.

So you're also not buying an Xbox, Playstation, Switch, etc. right?

I think that MS and Sony and Nintendo are being misleading with their terminology as well, yes, and I hope this EU legislation applies to them as well unless they change their terminology to make it clearer at the point of sale how little control users will receive when they aren't truly buying ownership of the hardware they buy.

Nothing I am saying is intended to dissuade anyone from engaging in the transactions that we currently label as "buying" these devices; I would love the EU to force the companies to more clearly label what they're selling instead of pretending that you get ownership when you enter a restrictive walled garden, but consumers can and should still be able to knowingly and freely choose a restrictive walled garden if the labelling as such is clear.

However, the "freely" part of "knowingly and freely" is complicated in some cases - people who want to communicate with businesses, groups, and friends that rely on Facebook or WhatsApp may not truly be free to decline to sign up with Facebook or WhatsApp, since those walled gardens have very strong network effects that can unreasonably restrict those who don't wish to opt-in. If the EU forces services like Facebook and WhatsApp to support interoperability with open-source and commercial alternatives, this issue will be mitigated.

I don't think this is a strong restriction on free choice when applied to gaming consoles, since those walled gardens don't have much of an impact on daily life activities, unlike Facebook and WhatsApp in many countries/contexts.

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

#996

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? As soon as you have sideloading, you have developers who can't get kicked off the app store for not giving a 30% cut because they're not on the app store.

Let's see what restrictions there are on side-loaded apps first. No Apple is going to cave in completely during the first round.

If they don't cave now then they will be forced to follow the law eventually, but this time they will get 10s of billions of dollars of additional fines.

The amount of fines that Apple wants to choose to pay is up to them. Either they cave, or they pay as large of a fine as for however long they keep fighting.

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

#997
post #511
post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just some anecdata: I use the Outlook PWA (on an iPhone!) to access my work mail and calendar. It does not have notifications, which I really liked for calendar events (because I’m forgetful), so that’s a bit sad. However, there is a decisive pro: It cannot enforce restrictive device policies. What a great feature! UX isn’t half bad either. It actually feels pretty native most of the time.

On the other hand our IT recently blocked external sharing of calendars, which I'd used to gain read-only access to my work calendar on my private phone and I bloody hate it – by the time the browser and Outlook have loaded on my under-powered phone, I could have launched my calendar app ten times over, plus the work calendar is now no longer integrated with the system calendar APIs so it no longer appears on my homescreen calendar widget, I now I have to switch back and forth between separate apps for my private and my work calendar, offline access only works so-so and wastes additional space, etc. etc.

(Plus I don't want to actually deal with full Outlook because I have zero interest in accessing my work mail privately, whereas I do need to take a look at my work calendar in order to avoid accidentally double-booking myself.)

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

#998
post #701
post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want good PWAs. I don’t want borderline spyware-apps with access to all kinds of apis. There is no reason why a messaging app needs my gyro data, or gps, or all of the other stuff they just implicitly get because they are an app. I’m starting to think that some of the worst that ever happened was that Firefox OS failed.

How will PWAs prevent your messaging app from getting gps data? A bad native app can require the gps permission, but a bad PWA app will be able to do the same, right?

They would be running in a browser, and you can just deny it getting location information, but in general, apps have access to much more raw data than a tab in the browser does. It's also possible, in theory, to run a PWA in a different browser which masks your information.

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

#999
post #998
post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will PWAs prevent your messaging app from getting gps data? A bad native app can require the gps permission, but a bad PWA app will be able to do the same, right?

They would be running in a browser, and you can just deny it getting location information, but in general, apps have access to much more raw data than a tab in the browser does. It's also possible, in theory, to run a PWA in a different browser which masks your information.

You can deny location data to a native app, can't you...

I really don't think that sandboxing is a good argument in favour of PWAs, honestly.

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

#1000
post #727

Superior functionality exclusively in the EU — USB-C, side-loading — is a good thing. It will remind US folks that the law is a powerful mechanism for making simple, non-controversial changes that improve everyone’s quality of life; but which corporations would otherwise refuse to accept. BTW — LAAS (lobbying-as-a-service) should probably exist.

No Thanks. Can you tell me how GDPR has made EU life better than US? It's a hot mess. Criminals of EU can now easily hide from the internet, while the innocent click through hundreds of cookie popups
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