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iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

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Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#91

Post by rezonant »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #81
jchw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah see, where I don't see eye-to-eye on here is the idea that Windows is bad because it lets you download and run whatever you want. I don't agree at all. I think Windows is just bad, and in fact, it gets worse as they try to push for an Apple-esque App Store model and slowly add roadblocks to """side-loading""" (or as we called it in my youth, "installing software".) Likewise, I don't think that's what makes iOS g…

I can go out and buy a windows machine if I want. Or a windows mobile phone back in the day, or an android phone today. There are so many alternatives to Apple products that if I wanted that kind of platform, it already exists and can be chosen! For Android…in China the play store basically doesn’t even exist, so phones with non-play stores aren’t rare at all. So you basically want to force your preferences on me, an…

> So you basically want to force your preferences on me

No one is forcing you to install third party apps. Are you really unable to control the impulse to install third party app stores on your device? You need Apple to stop you from doing something you don't want to do in the first place?

Just because you want to stick in the Apple approved apps doesn't mean that I should have to do the same on my own iPhone.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#92

Post by ankurdhama »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73
jchw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason iPad is good is not because you're not allowed to choose what browser engine to use. It's, largely, because the hardware is simply better than anything else on the market. I think it is amusing that there is a contingent of Apple fans that actually believe the platform will get significantly worse because people are allowed to sideload and install browsers that have their own browser engines. I think this…

We know it will because we remember what life was like before. Sucky platforms that were never good enough, always some weird piece of software that you thought was benign gunking up your system. It really did suck. And then…most of the problems were gone and things just worked. I’m ok if this is actually all optional, but I don’t think the anti-Apple crowd is going to be content until iOS is just another Windows. Th…

Why do people think that iOS will become like Windows when we all know that iOS (and Android) were designed with app sandboxing from start and not like Windows where a program can do anything it wants to.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#93

Post by ephemeral-life »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #79
CamperBob2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, that Plato guy knew what he was talking about. Try to rescue the prisoners from the cave and they'll fight like wildcats to get back in.

Because what we really need are less choices to save us right? “Look at all those poor sheeple buying Apple rather than a more open platform, they shouldn’t be making that choice so let’s take it away from them.”

If their bad choices have negative effects on others, for example developers being exploited, then yes the choice should be made for them. It's the same as smoking or drinking. When you smoke, there are harmful effects to third parties so the government limits the use of those products. When millions of people make choices that lead to millions of other people being exploited, governments should get involved. That is the entire point of modern legal systems. Free markets until negative externalities become out of control and then the government steps in.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#94

Post by RoyalHenOil »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #62
ivanmontillam wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that Europeans will eventually have a better experience with Apple than U.S. residents. It's not my intention to poison the well, but Apple feels like treating its customers like cattle.

Or a worse experience? I mean android phones and tablets are already something you can buy, people still buy Apple products despite that. > It's not my intention to poison the well, but Apple feels like treating its customers like cattle A lot of remember how the computing world was before, the Wild West that the EU is trying to make the only option. We aren’t eager to return to that, and would make different platfor…

I bought an iPad and an Apple Pencil for drawing.

If I could have bought the same hardware with the same functionality, but not Apple, I absolutely would have. It's not because I hate Apple products (I happily use Macintoshes), but because the system is too closed.

I overwhelmingly prefer Android, Microsoft, and macOS to iPadOS -- primarily because I can get a browser I like on them, but not on my iPad. If I didn't use it for drawing, I would sell it.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#95

Post by kmeisthax »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #68
wtallis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think it'll be easier to get away with using private APIs by selling through a different storefront? Isn't Apple is still requiring all apps to be submitted for notarization?

My understanding is Apple’s notarization is about accountability than policy/approval: I’m okay with having my apps stamped with my legal identity - that’s no different to Microsoft AuthentiCode going right-back to the late-1990s.

Regardless of how much review is used, Apple will still be gating what entitlements can be used by third-party apps. They already do this for dev-signed apps - i.e. you can't provision apps that ask for things like, say, task_for_pid-allow[0]. There's actually a whole host of entitlements that you either can't get as a third-party developer, or have to ask for special permission[1] for, or are only available to paid Apple Developer Program members.

Whether or not this hampers your use of private APIs depends on whether or not the API requires a private entitlement in order to work. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't - notably, all of IOKit is there just sitting in the public Frameworks directory, but you won't pass App Review if you touch any of it, because that's still considered private API surface. If you want to touch private APIs that are gated behind a private entitlement, you're not getting them. Remember: most of iOS's security comes from sandboxing, not human review. In fact, there's been a lot of scams on iOS that App Review has failed to catch. So Apple is never, not in a million years, going to give an official way to break out of the sandbox.

[0] In XNU, processes are part of a Mach task. The task_for_pid syscall obtains a Mach port for a given process's Mach task. If you have this port, you have full control over the process.

As you can imagine, this syscall normally only works for development processes that have opted-in to debugging with the get-task-allow entitlement. task_for_pid-allow bypasses this, allowing you to debug everything on the system. Some jailbreaks will even patch this syscall to allow retrieving a task for PID 0 - i.e. the kernel.

[1] Notably, there is an entitlement for using the VP9 decoder, which only Google gets to use.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#96

Post by mrtksn »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #67
huytersd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ll see. I feel like it’s going to be a good Petri dish to see how shitty the third party stuff makes the Apple ecosystem.

Weird. How would it? You don’t have to buy anything except from the Apple Store if you don’t want to.

The idea is that, if for example some "evil company" you really depend on decides to do things that Apple is protecting you against they can be like "you have to install our app from outside the App Store".

That "evil company" can be Facebook, Epic Games, your bank, your government etc.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#97

Post by realusername »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #81
jchw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah see, where I don't see eye-to-eye on here is the idea that Windows is bad because it lets you download and run whatever you want. I don't agree at all. I think Windows is just bad, and in fact, it gets worse as they try to push for an Apple-esque App Store model and slowly add roadblocks to """side-loading""" (or as we called it in my youth, "installing software".) Likewise, I don't think that's what makes iOS g…

I can go out and buy a windows machine if I want. Or a windows mobile phone back in the day, or an android phone today. There are so many alternatives to Apple products that if I wanted that kind of platform, it already exists and can be chosen! For Android…in China the play store basically doesn’t even exist, so phones with non-play stores aren’t rare at all. So you basically want to force your preferences on me, an…

> There are so many alternatives to Apple products that if I wanted that kind of platform, it already exists and can be chosen!

Oh yeah so many alternatives, there's Android with an identical business model and hmmm ... yeah that's many already!

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#98

Post by realusername »

bdcravens wrote: post #84
ivanmontillam wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that Europeans will eventually have a better experience with Apple than U.S. residents. It's not my intention to poison the well, but Apple feels like treating its customers like cattle.

Choice is good, though I can't help but wonder what % of European customers will start getting their applications from third-parties. In 12 or so years of on-again, off-again usage of Android (usually as a secondary phone), I've sideloaded one app: a pre-release game that I happily pulled down from the official channel once it went "official"

Side loading on Android is just a legal argument in courts, its made too complicated for normal users to use it.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#99

Post by spiderice »

ephemeral-life wrote: post #93
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because what we really need are less choices to save us right? “Look at all those poor sheeple buying Apple rather than a more open platform, they shouldn’t be making that choice so let’s take it away from them.”

If their bad choices have negative effects on others, for example developers being exploited, then yes the choice should be made for them. It's the same as smoking or drinking. When you smoke, there are harmful effects to third parties so the government limits the use of those products. When millions of people make choices that lead to millions of other people being exploited, governments should get involved. That is…

The idea that iOS has been a negative for developers is a hilarious one. Funny that all those poor developers choose to develop on iOS before android because that’s where the money is.

Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more

#100

Post by spiderice »

RoyalHenOil wrote: post #94
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a worse experience? I mean android phones and tablets are already something you can buy, people still buy Apple products despite that. > It's not my intention to poison the well, but Apple feels like treating its customers like cattle A lot of remember how the computing world was before, the Wild West that the EU is trying to make the only option. We aren’t eager to return to that, and would make different platfor…

I bought an iPad and an Apple Pencil for drawing. If I could have bought the same hardware with the same functionality, but not Apple, I absolutely would have. It's not because I hate Apple products (I happily use Macintoshes), but because the system is too closed. I overwhelmingly prefer Android, Microsoft, and macOS to iPadOS -- primarily because I can get a browser I like on them, but not on my iPad. If I didn't u…

You forgot the final line of your argument:

“…so we should use the government to force people to build that product I just dreamt up, rather than the one they want to build.”

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