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EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

appleinsider.com

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Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#351

Post by Aeolun »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #243
cmcaleer wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pixel 5's security update end of life is in two weeks[0]. This is a phone that launched October 2020. My iPhone XS which I bought in 2018 just got the iOS 17 update and it's working pretty well. I want to be able to load whatever I want on my phone, but I also don't want to have to buy a new phone every couple years (or sooner! Looks like the 5a is still in production with security updates ending in 11 months) to…

The rumors are that the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro will launch with a promise of 7 years of updates, including not only security fixes and bug fixes but also feature drops. We’ll see what’s announces next month, but Google might be about to jump ahead of even the iPhone on this point. Disclosure: although I have worked for Google in the past, I haven’t worked for them in more than 8 years, never worked on Android or Pix…

> The rumors are that the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro will launch with a promise of 7 years of updates

I’m not sure promises by Google are worth anything at this point.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#352

Post by abirch »

HWR_14 wrote: post #330
faeriechangling wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never installed the Meta omni-permission store on my Android, but I've certainly installed Facebook's applications via the Play Store. I'm not sure why the situation would be any different with iOS. It seems to me that the app store would still utterly dominate even if it were exposed to competition.

Google's Play Store allows Meta apps more permissions than Apple's App Store currently does. Meta lost tens of billions in market value (and an estimated $10 billion a year in revenue) when the new Apple App Store privacy rules went into effect. That's a powerful incentive.

Yes, Apple is pretty good about privacy. That'll be one reason for Meta and others to create their own stores.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#353

Post by martimarkov »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #300
coldtea wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Competition is always good for the consumers. So lets have a walled-garden OS compete with a sideloading-enabled/free-for-all/anything goes OS. But no, instead they have to break a good thing. Now every idiotic company like Adobe will demand their own installers, and updaters, and background processes that you can't turn off, and piss all over the iOS, like they do on the macOS. And let's not get started onto force…

All of that is already accounted for and protected by in the OS. An app cannot normally register daemons or agent (or even an XPC service). Installing is already limited to FrontBoard standard installation mechanism. All that will remain in a possible open iOS future.

Except usage of private APIs?

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#354

Post by LeoNatan25 »

shuckles wrote: post #319
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let’s ignore the macOS elephant in the room, and jump to Windows and Linux to straw-man an argument. There are “no restrictions”, one can “install anything” and “run any app” on that, and still it is … “reliable”? But actually both Windows and Linux are “reliable” too. Windows is much, much stable in terms of backwards compatibility than macOS and certainly iOS. Linux is so reliable that it runs about 99.9% of t…

Calling Windows reliable and saying professionals manage to keep Linux servers running does not help your argument.

I’ve been using Windows for 25 years now. Please don’t lecture me about its reliability, especially in the last 15 years. I’m also having a weekly kernel panic on my M1 Max Mac, a sight unseen on any of my Windows machines for more than a decade, even when using beta nVidia drivers.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#355

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

catiopatio wrote: post #338
grishka wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fingerprinting is hard . Especially when apps are as sandboxed as they are on iOS, and especially when there are so few iOS device models. Any APIs that can be used to share data between apps should be subject to permissions (e.g. file system access) or explicit user action (e.g. sharing content or links from one app to another).

Why do you think fingerprinting is hard? It’s truly not — the OS sandbox is nowhere near as restrictive as, say, a browser sandbox. Moreover, if Apple is forced to open the platform to third-party app stores, identifying unique users in collusion with the third-party app store is incredibly easy.

> Why do you think fingerprinting is hard?

They did manage to answer this question in their comment. It’s the entire last sentence. (It also seems fairly well implied that they mean “iOS fingerprinting is currently hard” given the topic of discussion.) I don’t see how I could reliably fingerprint if so many APIs require user permission. It might be possible but I don’t see easy.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#356

Post by JoshuaRogers »

kibwen wrote: post #318
nunez wrote: post #166

Fucking good. It's bullshit that you can only run Safari on iOS or that the App Store is the only store you can use. Yes, I understand the security implications of a third-party browser having deeper integrations into the OS and potential battery life concerns. I also don't care. I want to run Firefox on my phone. The actual thing. With containers and extensions. Let Safari compete on the merits. I want the choice of…

> Fucking good. Seconded. Perpetually baffled by the so-called hackers in all of these threads arguing vociferously against user freedom.

I think it comes down to what we expect the second order effects to be.

Those who argue that forcing Apple to open up their ecosystem is a good thing appear to believe that increased user freedom will lead to more option for all and increase freedom further. Those of us who argue that being forced to open their ecosystem is a bad thing believe (speaking personally) that any user freedom added would quickly be lost and set further back than we started as larger organizations would end up strong-arming or tricking users into giving away their freedom or fear missing out.

Personally I think we all want to see long-term user freedom, and I think whether we expect it to move forward or backward is what differs between us seeing this as good or bad.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#357

Post by madeofpalk »

natch wrote: post #309
kibwen wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rendering engine is a boring, unimportant implementation detail that users do not care for. Then I'm sure users won't mind when I'm allowed to install my own rendering engine on my own computer, that I own, because I bought it, and, therefore, own it.

Apple is trying to prevent familial and household abuse where people install invasive software on devices of household members to spy on them or otherwise take away their privacy and freedoms. What solution would you suggest? Just look the other way?

I'm otherwise indifferent to alternate browsers/engines on iOS, but this is a complete fiction. You made this up just to prop up your personal preference.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#358

Post by diego_sandoval »

kibwen wrote: post #318
nunez wrote: post #166

Fucking good. It's bullshit that you can only run Safari on iOS or that the App Store is the only store you can use. Yes, I understand the security implications of a third-party browser having deeper integrations into the OS and potential battery life concerns. I also don't care. I want to run Firefox on my phone. The actual thing. With containers and extensions. Let Safari compete on the merits. I want the choice of…

> Fucking good. Seconded. Perpetually baffled by the so-called hackers in all of these threads arguing vociferously against user freedom.

To me, actual freedom, understood as being free from unjust coercion, is more important than "user freedom", understood as having a wide range of services and goods to choose from.

In this case, the former is being attacked in order to achieve the latter.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#359

Post by ivanjermakov »

Condition1952 wrote: post #210
cmdli wrote: post #184

I, for one, do not look forward to having to sideload Facebook, Instagram, Google, Gmail, and every single other megacorps app just because they want to track my every click. I would rather give power to Apple than all the other companies.

I’m looking forward to downloading free and open source software from f-droid. I don’t care about gmail because I don’t use it

Vital email functions are available through many SMTP/IMAP clients anyway.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#360

Post by martimarkov »

albert180 wrote: post #98
kiratp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't get by fine on x86. That is the whole point here. My non-technical family are able to make their iOS devices "just work" with 0 support.

[flagged]

Nope, my parents had 20 things installed on their Android devices because they clicked yes to something.

I insist on the fact that you should respect the end user’s choice of platform and not try to change the platform to earn your 30% more. If you really hate it - don’t develop for Apple. I mean at the end of the day you can tell your customers buy an Android phone and see what they prefer - your app or the Apple eco system.

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