Xcode Constantly Phones Home • Hacker News Board

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#21

Post by amiantos » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

if you are an apple ecosystem app developer, apple already has an awful lot of information about you. you've paid them $100 every year, you pay them at least a 15% cut of every sale. they know your personal address one way or another, and your tax information. you most likely use their IDE, their APIs / development kit, which either they provide or you are paying for as part of our $100 developer fee, depending on your perspective. to get an app on any official Apple App Store you have to submit your app to them to notarize and get it reviewed for approval. you probably use an iPhone, essentially must use a Mac, and have a robust billing history in their stores.

so I'm not sure I totally understand the underlying message here, that apple is possibly phoning home to App Store Connect to secretly record every time a developer launches a project? it sounds a bit strangely conspiratorial in the context of a system where apple controls the entire developer supply chain already. anyway, I understand this is just one of those things that some people decide to care a lot about, and in some cases it makes a lot of sense, but not this one.

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#22

Post by chubot » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 9:15 AM UTC

amiantos wrote: post #21

if you are an apple ecosystem app developer, apple already has an awful lot of information about you. you've paid them $100 every year, you pay them at least a 15% cut of every sale. they know your personal address one way or another, and your tax information. you most likely use their IDE, their APIs / development kit, which either they provide or you are paying for as part of our $100 developer fee, depending on yo…

The blog post notes that it is poorly engineered and slow, which makes me glad I don't have to use Apple dev tools for anything

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#23

Post by dalemyers » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 9:30 AM UTC

This only occurs when you have Xcode set to automatically handle provisioning for you. If you don't, it doesn't happen.

That setting is meant to... well, communicate with Apple and get the latest provisioning profiles so that you don't have to manage them manually.

Xcode is terrible in a million different ways and Apple should be ashamed of it. But this is a non-issue.

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#24

Post by orphea » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 9:30 AM UTC

randomNumber7 wrote: post #12

burgerone wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that sarcasm? I wouldn't put it past them to do that. If it isn't, could you provide a source?

Sadly its sarcasm. What is not sarcasm, that I once lived in a region in germany where apples are grown. The local government had a project where they created some hiking trails. They wanted to call one of those "Apfelweg" (apple street or s.th. in englisch), because you know, there are apple trees everywhere. They had been sued by apple and had to rename it. Real.

Have they actually renamed it? Is it this project? https://apfelroute.nrw/

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#25

Post by frizlab » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 9:48 AM UTC

afandian wrote: post #15

15 years back I used to work somewhere that had an entirely separate engineering network with no route to the Internet. And a build room that was physically airgapped. All for good reasons. Xcode worked fine. I wonder how they do it now. I imagine Apple’s requirements have made it a lot more complicated.

The article says the builds do work even when denying the connections, so it should not be an issue.

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#26

Post by soco » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 9:51 AM UTC

randomNumber7 wrote: post #12

burgerone wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that sarcasm? I wouldn't put it past them to do that. If it isn't, could you provide a source?

Sadly its sarcasm. What is not sarcasm, that I once lived in a region in germany where apples are grown. The local government had a project where they created some hiking trails. They wanted to call one of those "Apfelweg" (apple street or s.th. in englisch), because you know, there are apple trees everywhere. They had been sued by apple and had to rename it. Real.

Oh but it's by far not the single instance of fruit related abuse: https://www.popsci.com/technology/apple-swiss-trademark/ No matter how much you like their products, Apple is just another corporation playing the corporate abuse card.

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#27

Post by LeoPanthera » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 9:52 AM UTC

Although the title was not changed, if you don't read the actual post, it's misleading.

It makes connections to Apple when you launch it, and when you open project files.

It also makes connections when you build, although that is to be expected, since signing is required for uploading builds to the store.

It does not "constantly" phone home.

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#28

Post by pzo » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #27

Although the title was not changed, if you don't read the actual post, it's misleading. It makes connections to Apple when you launch it, and when you open project files. It also makes connections when you build, although that is to be expected, since signing is required for uploading builds to the store. It does not "constantly" phone home.

This is still bad, When I'm developing I'm building many times during the day but uploading to appstore or TF maybe once a week. And thats as a freelancer if someone part of big team probably uses dedicated CI and special services for releasing build.

Same it shouldn't phone every time I open project files, what for? It would be also enough if phone home when openning Xcode once every 5 days unless dev manually ask for checking updates.

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#29

Post by eviks » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:02 AM UTC

dalemyers wrote: post #23

This only occurs when you have Xcode set to automatically handle provisioning for you. If you don't, it doesn't happen. That setting is meant to... well, communicate with Apple and get the latest provisioning profiles so that you don't have to manage them manually. Xcode is terrible in a million different ways and Apple should be ashamed of it. But this is a non-issue.

> This one phase took 50.6 seconds when the entire build was 56.8 seconds!

This is clearly a yes-issue

Re: Xcode Constantly Phones Home

#30

Post by 0x0 » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:04 AM UTC

I usually avoid logging in to xcode. I prefer to manually configure provisioning profiles and code signing certificates by hand in the developers.apple.com web interface anyways. You can use xcodebuild on the command line to get a signed ipa, and then you can use altool or application loader to upload the ipa to appstoreconnect. I don't trust xcode to not stomp all over my carefully configured provisioning profiles and app ids.