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Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

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Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#81

Post by vanjajaja1 »

em-bee wrote: post #68
meowtimemania wrote: post #39

I don't totally understand the concept of having an everything app. Isn't the OS the "everything app"? Do people like the wechat experience because you have one login and don't have to go through an onboarding process in every mini-app?

the concept is that the primary feature that wechat provides is your identity with your wechat account. you connect to other people and you have verified their identity as well. from there it is most logical that you then want to use that identity to share work, make appointments, pay for things, etc. the miniapp that we used the most was a voting tool. you could see who in the group had voted for what and it was ver…

I'm not even anon on twitter, but bonkers to think that people would want to directly connect their finances to things they say in online in public in this day and age

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#82

Post by trompetenaccoun »

>And with Apple’s shareholders not in agreement to actually put their money where their mouth is when it comes to human rights, it’s not likely Apple is going to go against China anytime soon.

Interesting link in that last paragraph: https://reclaimthenet.org/apple-rejects-freedom-of-expressio...

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#83

Post by joshstrange »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #76
joshstrange wrote: post #5

I'm not sure this article has the slam dunk it thinks it does. Those aren't "apps" they are at best "web apps". They use a JS framework and some special markup from what I can tell. In this sense WeChat is more akin to a web browser than having multiple "apps" inside it. > Since these are “apps within an app”, many of these mini-programs are flouting the App Store rules since they were not downloaded from the App Sto…

I thought Apple disallowed apps from downloading things that were executable. A team I was on got rejected for this in 2015 or so. We were using Ionic to make a WebView based app for a news station. We wanted some of the css and js to be loaded from the internet so we could change various things without needing an official app update. We were told to we could fetch news story data from an api, and get back json/xml/e…

I know of multiple apps that have that ability and I've personally shipped 10+ cross-platform apps built on Quasar+Vue+Capacitor and Ionic+Angular+Cordova/Capacitor and a few have had the ability to remotely update the code (just the JS/HTML/CSS) and they have all been approved. I am interested in the exact way the rejection was worded. IIRC their dev agreement had an exception, at one point, to the "no downloading executable code" rule, it said that using downloaded code in JavascriptCore was allowed. Apple doesn't seem to approve of remote updating but they seem to turn a blind eye to it, I would assume most big companies that use these cross-platform tools like this have a way to remotely update the code (JS/HTML/CSS).

I totally believe they rejected your app though, App Store review is pretty bad. I mean at least they are _way_ faster now but it's reviewer roulette for sure. I've been dinged for things that aren't even in the App Store dev agreement, they were in some other document. Even worse the reviewer told me I needed to change my wording when requesting a permission, the problem? She wanted me to change text I don't control in the permissions dialog. I explained that I only had control over the single string in quotes but she told me I was wrong (I got through on the next review). The inconsistency in the review process is maddening and so much of it is reading the tea leaves of what they actually want and what is allowed. I mean, we all know it's against the rules to send advertising/marketing push notifications right? Right? That _never_ happens in the App Store... Make whatever rules you want but dear god please enforce them consistently and change/remove a rule if you've decided to not enforce it.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#84

Post by gottorf »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #45
meowtimemania wrote: post #39

I don't totally understand the concept of having an everything app. Isn't the OS the "everything app"? Do people like the wechat experience because you have one login and don't have to go through an onboarding process in every mini-app?

> I don't totally understand the concept of having an everything app. Isn't the OS the "everything app"? The web browser is an everything app on your desktop. As Marc Andreessen said at the time: > Netscape will soon reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers.

> As Marc Andreessen said at the time:

>> Netscape will soon reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers.

It's funny how history proved him so wrong and so right at the same time.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#85

Post by joshstrange »

srcreigh wrote: post #30
joshstrange wrote: post #5

I'm not sure this article has the slam dunk it thinks it does. Those aren't "apps" they are at best "web apps". They use a JS framework and some special markup from what I can tell. In this sense WeChat is more akin to a web browser than having multiple "apps" inside it. > Since these are “apps within an app”, many of these mini-programs are flouting the App Store rules since they were not downloaded from the App Sto…

Apple bans alternative web browsers too... so..

I assume you are replying to this part?

> WeChat is more akin to a web browser than having multiple "apps" inside it

>> Apple bans alternative web browsers too... so..

If they use a different browser engine they are currently banned but you can wrap Safari/webkit like every browser app on iOS does and provide different chrome/features. WeChat isn't embedding a different rendering engine, just using webkit.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#86

Post by kredd »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #48
rat9988 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell us more about how the government picked the winner?

Under COVID, when being able to board public transport, enter venues, etc. required showing one’s health status from one’s phone, the Chinese state facilitated that through two apps in particular: WeChat and Alipay.

WeChat was ubiquitous in China way before the incident. It’s simply being practical and using a method that almost everyone has access to. Whether it was a correct way to do so or not is a different topic.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#87

Post by deciplex »

woooooo wrote: post #57
TillE wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> policy experts assumed China would become more liberal No one actually thinks that, it's just the line they use to justify themselves to the public. Like how Saudi Arabia has been promising amazing "reforms" for the better part of a decade.

Back in the 90s, we really were that arrogant. Policy makers believed history was over and we had won. We had just done it to Russia successfully (short-term). Why not China?

Bold to claim that anything that happened in Russia in the 90s could be called a "success." If that's what was in store for China then good on the CPC and President Xi for averting it. The "integration" of Russia into the global capitalist system was an utter disaster from both a humanitarian and a strategic perspective.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#88

Post by deciplex »

derefr wrote: post #31
game_the0ry wrote: post #25

When the west opened trade to China, policy experts assumed China would become more liberal like the west. Instead, the west is becoming more like China. [1, 2, 3] [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/ready-for-your-e... [3] (countless more examples, especially recently...)

China is becoming more liberal in the classical sense (more money accruing to regular "new money" entrepreneurs instead of to oligarchs); they just haven't hit the "borgeoisie-funded revolt against the aristocracy" phase of liberalization yet. Give them 50 years.

What aristocracy? And over half the Chinese economy is state-run.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#89

Post by deepsun »

pavlov wrote: post #28
sdfghswe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much like Adobe did to Macs in the 1990s, WeChat has become so powerful they control the platform. I'd enjoy listening to the story here, spacebanana.

The story with Adobe on Mac in the 1990s is that their apps were so important to the platform that they practically had a veto on the API for Apple’s next-gen OS. When Apple acquired NeXT, the original plan was for the NeXT API (now called Cocoa) to become the only way to build apps on the new Mac OS. But Adobe made it clear they were not going to port everything to Objective-C. In response Apple came up with Carbon,…

Well, asking to rewrite all your stuff, especially such large platforms as Photoshop is a very big undertaking and resource investment. Don't see where the grudge comes from.

E.g. if someone comes to our organization and ask to rewrite half of what we do in their new language, we won't move. Should that someone hold a grudge against us?

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#90

Post by deciplex »

dvt wrote: post #36
goodbyesf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> and trying to force every country around the world to adopt their 'values'. Hot take: Yes. Because classical liberalism, the free market, and bottom-up government has done more for the advancement of humankind than sharia law, tyrants, oligarchies, theocracies, or dictatorships have ever done. Let's stop pretending like all values have the same ethical valence.

Well, Marxism-Leninism did more good for the Soviet Republics in its first 40 years there (beating back an imperialist invasion, rapidly developing industry, beating the Nazis, putting the first man in space, raising the standard of living nearly to par with the West despite being a feudal backwater in 1917, etc) than capitalism has done for those countries since we finally beat them thirty years ago. And, public opinion bears that fact out. So, I'd say the jury's out on just how much of our improvements to standards of living can be attributed to giving 10 people all the money in the world, vs (for example) attributing it to scientific advancement in general.

edit: sadly dang has once again taken it upon himself to stop communists from posting on HN. I'm sure most of y'all agree with this in the first place. at any rate take this as an open invitation to drag me in the comments with whatever ridiculous nonsense you can dream up. I won't be responding to any of it because I literally can't. thanks

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