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Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

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Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#311

Post by yreg »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #228
yreg wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's unclear how having a proper documentation detracts from customer experience or the final product.

It's not that it detracts from the customer UX, it's simply that they don't care about the developers. They know developers will walk on glass for the privilege of accessing a large high value consumer market. It's exactly what Jobs said and it paid off for them as you can see in Apple's current valuation. Why is that still unclear to you?

This makes sense in a company with limited. Apple can obviously both care about customer UX and have a good development documentation, have a good public bug tracker, pay out bug bounties, etc.

If they hire 20 people for this and give them a few offices in their precious mothership, it won't affect customer UX in the slightest. They may continue to give it the top-most priority, which is the right choice to make.

That's why it's unclear to me. Apple's valuation is a poor argument. It could have been even higher, since there are areas where Apple is failing precisely thanks to poor developer relations. E.g. serious gaming on Macs/Apple TV, even though the hardware is amazing.

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#312

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

yreg wrote: post #311
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it detracts from the customer UX, it's simply that they don't care about the developers. They know developers will walk on glass for the privilege of accessing a large high value consumer market. It's exactly what Jobs said and it paid off for them as you can see in Apple's current valuation. Why is that still unclear to you?

This makes sense in a company with limited. Apple can obviously both care about customer UX and have a good development documentation, have a good public bug tracker, pay out bug bounties, etc. If they hire 20 people for this and give them a few offices in their precious mothership, it won't affect customer UX in the slightest. They may continue to give it the top-most priority, which is the right choice to make. Tha…

Why are you asking me? Why not ask Apple directly?

Their valuation and product success is poof that they're on the right track as a company. The fact that you think their track should be different just to make you happy is irrelevant to them and is exactly what Jobs answered in 1997 to that irate developer: The consumer product matters more than pleasing devs which are niche and picky group of people that are hard to please anyway and not really relevant as their consumer target.

I'm gonna have to stop the conversation here since we're going around in circles at this point.

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#313

Post by HybridCurve »

crazygringo wrote: post #51

Can someone remind me why Apple is so anti-VM in seemingly every instance? It just seems so arbitrary and unhelpful, and I have a hard time imagining that the amount of hardware purchased it forces outweigh the benefits from making macOS/iOS better platforms for development and computation. It just seems like such an odd stance to take.

Apple is mostly a hardware company. Aside from aesthetics, people are attracted to their products because of the UI for the OS. If you get that for little to nothing, why would anyone buy their overpriced hardware?

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#314

Post by yreg »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #312
yreg wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense in a company with limited. Apple can obviously both care about customer UX and have a good development documentation, have a good public bug tracker, pay out bug bounties, etc. If they hire 20 people for this and give them a few offices in their precious mothership, it won't affect customer UX in the slightest. They may continue to give it the top-most priority, which is the right choice to make. Tha…

Why are you asking me? Why not ask Apple directly? Their valuation and product success is poof that they're on the right track as a company. The fact that you think their track should be different just to make you happy is irrelevant to them and is exactly what Jobs answered in 1997 to that irate developer: The consumer product matters more than pleasing devs which are niche and picky group of people that are hard to…

Overall financial results are no proof that making a bad documentation was the right decision. I don't even believe it's an intentional decision, probably just carelessness.

>Why are you asking me? Why not ask Apple directly?

Not sure what's this supposed to mean, you are the one who decided to reply.

>The consumer product matters more than pleasing devs

This is obviously a false dilemma which I already pointed out. I never ever said that pleasing the devs should be prioritized over the consumers.

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#315

Post by varenc »

rektide wrote: post #126
varenc wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up executing JavaScript generally vs JavaScript with a JIT. Apple has specifically banned Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation, where JavaScript (or anything) is translated into machine code, marked for execution, and ran directly on the processor. There are real security reasons for forbidding this[0]. All modern browsers use JIT compilation for JS since this is crucial for good performance. But a JIT isn't…

Long post. What you're saying may have some good to know particulars that I didn't get right. But the net is: the only performant way to run JS or any other non-pre-compiled (jit) language is banned. And there's separate bans altogether on browser engines even if running like dogs it were tempting. Because Apple sucks & is mean & a shit. These are both horseshit fuckery excuses. Cast these wads into the pit. It's all…

Hah sorry for the wall of text. Totally agree the real reason Apple bans browsers is not motivated by security, and them pointing at the JIT/performance is just the one plausible excuse.

But besides alternative browsers, IMHO this ban does have valid security/privacy/anti-scam reasoning. If apps could mark pages of memory as executable, they could introduce arbitrary new behavior whenever they want. Though it sounds like iOS security is good enough that even than an app can't break out of its sandbox.

But even with the sandbox, there's no point in the App Store review process if apps can completely change their code/behavior whenever. This dovetails into an App Store debate, but I think there is value in the idea of a review process. I'm sure there'd be way more predatory and malicious scam apps out there taking advantage of the tech-illiterate without app reviews. (Though I'm not saying Apple always does reviews right, or that they shouldn't allow app side-loading with less stringent requirements). Whoops wrote another wall of text.

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#316

Post by varenc »

saagarjha wrote: post #110
varenc wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up executing JavaScript generally vs JavaScript with a JIT. Apple has specifically banned Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation, where JavaScript (or anything) is translated into machine code, marked for execution, and ran directly on the processor. There are real security reasons for forbidding this[0]. All modern browsers use JIT compilation for JS since this is crucial for good performance. But a JIT isn't…

There's not much of a security argument for forbidding a JIT.

Interesting! I had assumed that if you could mark pages of memory as executable (for a JIT), that an app could use that to call all sorts of security/privacy sensitive private APIs they're usually forbidden from using. But maybe not? Or is iOS sandboxing just good enough it doesn't matter? (but at the minimum, it does still seem to nullify the app store review process if apps can introduce arbitrary new behavior/code after review)

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#317

Post by amelius »

jonplackett wrote: post #249
Gareth321 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am convinced this is by design. Apple has leaned heavily into service based revenue. This means recurring revenue. So in their App Store, they heavily incentivise subscriptions over one-time purchases. One of their tools is frequent and rapid API deprecation. This breaks older apps which aren't maintained. Developers must therefore spend much more effort on maintaining software on iOS and macOS (I can still run sof…

Which IMHO has made the AppStore a cesspool of awfulness. Buying a one time app for a few quid used to be a normal and a good deal all round (I say this as a customer and iOS developer) But now EVERYTHING is a monthly subscription. Even for apps that really shouldn’t need any updates - but like you say, they do need constant updates just to remain functions. It’s created a broken AppStore and I just never pay for any…

Ripe for disruption ...

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#318

Post by vardump »

evdevreed wrote: post #299
rollcat wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very fast moving target. Apple keeps rewriting and deprecating stuff faster than they can write the documentation. As a newcomer to native macOS development, I'm sometimes struggling to even find working examples.

Not that it's any relief, but this is also the case with Windows too. MS often introduces breaking changes in the Windows API and rarely adds/updates examples. Unfortunately, it's the norm in most massive closed source ecosystems like these. On the one hand, it makes being a developer on these platforms pretty painful at times, and on the other hand, it also increases the value in having expertise with them.

"MS often introduces breaking changes in the Windows API"

Can you give an example? I have also plenty of Windows development experience, but can't think of anything. More like, Microsoft seems to be pretty careful making sure APIs don't break.

NTAPI doesn't count, because it's undocumented in the first place and you're not supposed to use it in the userland at all. Yeah, we all do, but...

(Many APIs are pretty bad in the first place, but that's another matter.)

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#319

Post by l8rlump »

the_other wrote: post #193
l8rlump wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to sell hardware. I'm reminded of this every day when I can't use Apple Reminders and Calendar properly on non-Apple devices. I have an Apple phone but use a non-Apple computer. You used to be able to have a web interface to Reminders, but they changed it and now you can't add tasks in the web interface. No worries then, let's use Caldav. Hmmm, can't add a Caldav server to iCloud anymore. Ahh, we can add a…

> You used to be able to have a web interface to Reminders, but they changed it and now you can't add tasks in the web interface. I just used iCloud.com. Seems to work fine for adding reminders. Are you talking about an API, or the iCloud web UI?

iCloud web UI. Sorry, I just tried again and you can add tasks, but you can't set a due date or time, which I rely on heavily. You used to be able to do this until they went to the "new" Reminders. They gave us a prompt to upgrade to the new reminders, but you don't realize that you lose these features, and as far as I can tell, you can't go back after you "upgrade".

Re: Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines

#320

Post by l8rlump »

ElFitz wrote: post #122
l8rlump wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to sell hardware. I'm reminded of this every day when I can't use Apple Reminders and Calendar properly on non-Apple devices. I have an Apple phone but use a non-Apple computer. You used to be able to have a web interface to Reminders, but they changed it and now you can't add tasks in the web interface. No worries then, let's use Caldav. Hmmm, can't add a Caldav server to iCloud anymore. Ahh, we can add a…

> I might be cynical but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a ploy to get more people into buying more of their devices. I’d bet on just not testing that use case because they don’t care enough about it. Thus not catching and never fixing any arising issue or regression.

Maybe, but combined with the downplayed stripping of features from the iCloud web interface, I'm still skeptical.
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