Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#161

Post by matheusmoreira » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

wafflemaker wrote: post #47

Lol, you're asking for it by using apple. I'm still recommending Apple to family members (less support needed from me, and I can always say I have Android and can't use apple so I can't help). But you have to go all in. If you want non apple stuff, just use something else. And if you can use Linux etc., why are you using Apple? Other then being lazy, which is totally ok.

> Other then being lazy, which is totally ok.

It's not OK. This collective laziness and convenience is our number one enemy. People don't want to be responsible, they want some corporation to manage everything so they don't have to think about stuff.

We need more people to take responsibility and use Linux and free software and hardware. Owning the computing system means being responsible for it, and we need to get people to accept that responsibility. The less of us there are, the more business and financial sense it makes for them to just straight up ignore us as some irrelevant vocal minority.

We should all own our computers, and there should be so many of us that they have to suck it up because not doing so means they take a big hit to their profits.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#162

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #112

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like anyone is suing Ford or Dodge for only making accessories that work on their own cars and trucks. It's not like anyone can legitimately complain that Ford is anticompetitive because they aren't making themselves compatible with Dodge oil filters. You're conflating two different things here. One is, are their oil filters compatible ? That isn't a problem; they can be incompatible. They're often incompa…

No I'm not conflating things- Ford and Dodge filter incompatibility is almost directly comparable to a software company making API changes to be incompatible or to choose not to offer something they could easily include. And it's not just Ford and Dodge; practically every car maker chooses to make some parts that are proprietary. Oil filters are a particular easy one to compare to software practices. Ford and Dodge h…

> The ONLY reason that you can't swap Ford/Dodge filters between engines with similar filtration requirements is because each company uses a different thread size and filter interface dimensions.

Which is maybe dumb, but it isn't a problem, because of this:

> They also make their specifications available to aftermarket filter manufacturers like Wix and Fram.

Which is the thing Apple isn't doing, and furthermore is doing the opposite and preventing full compatibility with third party watches even if they would reverse engineer the protocol used between the Apple Watch and iPhones. Which is what makes it an antitrust problem in that case but not the other.

Moreover, the argument you're making is that the automakers purposely cause their filters to be incompatible to limit competition. You're essentially arguing that it should be an antitrust violation in that case. Which is a weaker claim because competition in that space isn't being as clearly inhibited -- nobody is claiming that the incompatibility is impacting the quality of third party oil filters -- but if you made the case that it was then you would be condemning Ford rather than vindicating Apple.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#163

Post by sunshowers » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

gretch wrote: post #127

sunshowers wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this argument happens to conveniently align with Apple's financial interests.

It's not a problem, it's a good thing that someone's financial interests intersect with sound security practices. That like saying "people want reliable cars" conveniently aligns with Toyota's interest and implying there's something wrong happening.

No, it's like saying that you can only buy Toyota aftermarket accessories at a steep markup, and other accessories are locked out via cryptography.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#164

Post by maximusdrex » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #101

I guess I’ll take the contra here on messages integration — moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in the security boundary and therefore security architecture and therefore security promises that apple makes on iMessage. I do not believe average smartwatch users understand what they’d be doing if they got this. I do not believe vendors…

I truly don’t understand how these types of comments keep appearing under any discussion of apple’s blatantly anti-competitive behavior with messages. This doesn’t even make sense on technical grounds; it would be trivial to require such message passing to be encrypted/signed securely if that’s your real concern. After all, the Apple Watch does exist and does have these capabilities, so it’s clearly possible to do it and maintain the “security boundaries” you’re so concerned with. Then every single one of these comments inevitably turn towards spam messages which no longer even makes sense since iMessage has been filled with spam lately. I really don’t see how allowing smartwatch manufacturers to also interface with iMessage (in the same way Apple Watches do) will inevitably increase spam on the platform which can’t be detected/mitigated in other ways. I’d love to see some technically rigorous explanation for why apple can’t support any third-party anything instead of hand wringing about “security” with no real explanation but I have a feeling I’ll be waiting a long time.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#165

Post by cosmic_cheese » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #131

distrill wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's pretty frustrating how "apple people" just don't care that it's apples fault. i routinely hear my wife mutter "i hate google so much!" when a google maps integration is being intentionally hobbled to keep her using apple maps. or when she has trouble managing rcs conversations because somebody in our social world has the gall to be on an android phone.

I am aware that apple blocks certain functionality to maintain a cohesive and secure experience. It is THE reason I buy their products, I want the curation. Otherwise I'd buy an android device.

My personal stance on this is that while I’m open to making iOS, etc more flexible, it needs to be done in a way that cleanly avoids the whole “grandma accidentally installed a pile of browser toolbars yet again” problem. I’m confident I can manage added flexibility myself but there’s a very real need for a truly foolproof, social-engineering-resistant option to point friends and family without such aptitudes toward.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#166

Post by kelnos » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

jisnsm wrote: post #23

Steve16384 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't if there are only two choices and consumers don't like either.

That’s not Apple’s fault or responsibility. Maybe Android should stop sucking.

Sure it is. Both Apple and Google, through various tactics, have ensured that it's virtually impossible for a third smartphone OS to be successful to anywhere near the level they have been.

Android is fine. It has some downsides vs. iOS, and some advantages. But that isn't the point. The point is that to make a new smartphone OS (or even one that's based on Android, but is independent of the Google ecosystem) that can do everything Android and iOS can do is an undertaking that few would even bother to take on. That's not due to technical challenges, it's due to market barriers that Apple and Google have erected. (IMO, the sorts of things that we as citizens in a healthy society should not allow corporations to do.)

And those that (sorta?) do try to make a competing OS, like LineageOS, GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, etc., end up with far less-capable phones than a Google-blessed Android phone. (And when most/all of those capabilities are present, it's through brittle hacks and compromises that basically turn the phone into an imitation of the Google-blessed phone, with many of the downsides intact.)

Put another way, it's not Apple's or Google's responsibility to make things more competitive, but it is their responsibility to not make things anti competitive, and it is their fault when alternatives don't exist because of their anti-competitive behavior.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#167

Post by dmitrygr » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #92

dmitrygr wrote: post #37

This article is 100% weapons-grade FUD > It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to [...] or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting REALLY? Why not RTFM? https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co... >Notification Actions > Starting with iOS 8.0, the NP can inform the NC of potential > actions that are associated with iOS notifications. On the > user’s behalf, the NC can then r…

Where is the part where you can reply to a message?

OP said “ cannot do A or B”. I demonstrated how to do B, proving the original statement to be a lie. The fact that you still cannot do A irrelevant. Hyperbole has no place in technical discourse.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#168

Post by sunshowers » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

EA-3167 wrote: post #159

ch4s3 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your value prop to customers is seamless and secure default behavior, then of course blocking insecure peripherals aligns with your financial interests. This doesn't seem nefarious at all to me.

Something I learned a while ago is that there's a particular brand of very vocal person online who has a bone to pick with Apple. Sometimes it's for a good reason, sometimes less so, but the point is that they come to discussions of any Apple topic with a conclusion ready in hand and then work backwards from that. In this case the conclusion is, "Apple is wicked, perfidious, and monopolistic." Truthfully there isn't…

I think trillion dollar companies should not exist. They are inherently destructive to humanity.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#169

Post by sunaookami » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

rpdillon wrote: post #113

scosman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this Apple criticism (scherlocking). Someone built a search for your files, so it's not right for Apple to build a pretty key feature into the OS? There's a lot of fair criticisms of Apple, but they don't have to be absolutely first at everything or never enter the market.

The key criticism is the final step. They don't only duplicate the functionality. They then ban the original implementation from their stores because it can create "customer confusion".

This has never happened.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#170

Post by Nextgrid » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #157

Nextgrid wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in the security boundary Anyone can already screenshot iMessages and move them out of the "security boundary"... which btw doesn't exist much, as if you have any Mac connected to your iCloud account then those messages are being synced to an SQLite DB any process running under your user can acces…

I don’t think you understand what the security boundary of iMessage is. People’s phones got compromised by NSO sending images to them via whatsapp that used an exploit in one of the image libraries to run a malware payload. The security boundary isn’t about whether you can see your own messages, it’s whether bad people can root your phone by getting untrusted code to run. That’s a very different proposition if iMessa…

It doesn't need to be a plugin ecosystem - no third party code needs to run within the iMessage processes/sandboxes/containers. In fact, no third-party code needs to run at all on the phone - all that's needed is to expose an API over BLE that allows previously authorized external devices to query/send messages.