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Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

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Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#221

Post by judge2020 »

wpm wrote: post #184
liuliu wrote: post #81

I think, we fundamentally lack a mechanism to enforce secure / privacy aware APIs without resorting to trusted inner-circle type of things. I am already not comfortable with Apple picking winners (such as giving Zoom special entitlement but not the VOIP apps you want to distribute by your own). Apple trusting their own apps more than other apps is another symptom of this and it is not helping their anti-trust situati…

Quicktime Player.app gets an entitlement called `com.apple.private.tcc.allow`, giving it unprompted access to the Camera, Microphone, and Screen Capture. An MDM administrator, managing a computer or device owned by an organization, cannot grant those permissions to anything without user consent. For good reason! So why the *fuck* does Apple think they're entitled to?

Replace MDM administrator with ‘malware author’ or ‘spy software’ to get your answer. There is functionally no difference between a regular company doing MDM wanting to bypass camera permission prompts and a hacker who has tricked/forced the user into enrolling into MDM.

Now, replace ‘Apple’ with ‘malware author’. What’s the difference? Well, for one, a hacker has nothing to lose and everything to gain from snooping on your webcam. Meanwhile, if Apple mishandles this permission or used it to beam video data to HQ, there’s a high likelihood hundreds of millions of dollars of iPhone or Mac customers are lost, resulting in billions of dollars in stock value loss.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#222

Post by FireBeyond »

sunaookami wrote: post #169
rpdillon wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not explicitly (because that might be too openly anti-competitive even for Apple) but Apple refused to allow f.lux into the App Store, and it had to be sideloaded - and Apple leaned on them to stop offering that.

When Apple did offer Night Shift in iOS 9.3 it made the APIs to do this Apple-only, for ... reasons. As of today, no non-Apple app can modify color temperature of the display.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#223

Post by sod »

I used an apple watch since the first one, updated twice, but stopped using it a few months ago. Siri got slower an more unreliable. Automatic sport detection became annoying. And still having to charge it every single day became pretty old. I miss being able to pay with my watch without having to unlock my phone. But thats about it. Anything else about that product just became annoying.

I'm 100% certain that if 3rd party watches could integrate like apple watch could, that apple watch could be way better. But the lack of alternatives conceals how mediocre of a product it became. I wish apple wasn't such a control freak.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#224

Post by ianferrel »

rickdeckard wrote: post #73

> "Apple’s “Watch Policy” annoys me, but not enough to switch to Android. I hope Apple will be forced to improve their compatibility with other watches." The conundrum of "[xyz] annoys me, but not enough to [do anything about it], yet I hope [Company] will be forced to improve [xyz]" So where is that 'force' expected to come from...?

> So where is that 'force' expected to come from...?

On the margin, it probably does annoy some people enough to do something about it. And even though Apple's policy on this isn't enough to move me, if you combine it with my other annoyances about Apple products, eventually the sum will be enough.

And we vocalize stuff like this because switching does have a cost that I'd rather not pay, so hopefully people who can make a change at Apple will see the discontent and fix it so that I don't have to pay the switching cost.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#225

Post by 9rx »

Nextgrid wrote: post #117
rickdeckard wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is more, where is that 'force' expected to come from which should make them change their way? Just hopes and prayers?

Regulation? When a market is stuck in a local maximum, an external force would be beneficial to push it out of it.

Unless regulation is the problem[1], you need the will of the people[2] to see regulation come into force. But if the people had the will, they could just see it through already. No need for regulation.

[1] Which it is in the case of computing. Intellectual property law makes direct competition against the law.

[2] Assuming a democracy.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#226

Post by lern_too_spel »

ch4s3 wrote: post #145
wobfan wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is (I guess) not what OP meant. Apple obviously also gains financially from blokcing everything outside of there ecosystem, mainly because the majority of Apple users will only buy Apple hardware. Obviously, yeah, keeping the hardware a bit more safe also helps, but the main financial gain is definitely not coming from this.

Note that I said seamless AND secure. Having preferential treatment for a limited set of well known hardware makes the experience seamless. I like the secure and easy hand-off between apple devices. I wouldn't want to give up the security to make it work.

> I wouldn't want to give up the security to make it work

Android shows that you don't have to.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#227

Post by worik »

EA-3167 wrote: post #174
sunshowers wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Case in point. If the topic was that, then I'd welcome the discussion, but when you simply bring that to every discussion about Apple... it gets old. After all your statement only really needs to be said once for people to understand it, which makes the repetition over the years very grating. "Single issue posters" are generally the least engaging on the internet.

Apple is a poster child for why there should be limits on the power of wealth

Closing your mind to the possibility that Apple is throughly rotton is probably soothing, but the possibility remains that we are right, you are wrong, and each time the conclusion is the same, and correct

Big Tech monopolies sniffle innovation and hord resources

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#228

Post by coolspot »

snotrockets wrote: post #79
tacker2000 wrote: post #65

Similar thing is going on with the Spotify Apple Watch app, probably so that people migrate to Apple Music... see this discussion, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/1h6qmrw/spotify...

With Spotify app, some issues seem to be due to Spotify themselves. For example, even when you explicitly download music to your watch, the app needs network connection to start playing. This seems to be explicit design decision on Spotify's part.

Likely a condition from IP holders to make sure the play is counted and paid for.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#229

Post by Spivak »

wpm wrote: post #184
liuliu wrote: post #81

I think, we fundamentally lack a mechanism to enforce secure / privacy aware APIs without resorting to trusted inner-circle type of things. I am already not comfortable with Apple picking winners (such as giving Zoom special entitlement but not the VOIP apps you want to distribute by your own). Apple trusting their own apps more than other apps is another symptom of this and it is not helping their anti-trust situati…

Quicktime Player.app gets an entitlement called `com.apple.private.tcc.allow`, giving it unprompted access to the Camera, Microphone, and Screen Capture. An MDM administrator, managing a computer or device owned by an organization, cannot grant those permissions to anything without user consent. For good reason! So why the *fuck* does Apple think they're entitled to?

I mean the reason is because Apple, the people who made the security boundary, and Apple the people who made Quicktime are the same people.

I'm not saying it's not anti-competitive but it's fine from a security context. Apple knows exactly how Quicktime behaves, that it doesn't act maliciously, and can't be updated to do so.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#230

Post by lukevp »

sod wrote: post #223

I used an apple watch since the first one, updated twice, but stopped using it a few months ago. Siri got slower an more unreliable. Automatic sport detection became annoying. And still having to charge it every single day became pretty old. I miss being able to pay with my watch without having to unlock my phone. But thats about it. Anything else about that product just became annoying. I'm 100% certain that if 3rd…

The ultra only needs to be charged for like 45 mins every couple days. It’s nice for the “find my phone” button and for getting alerts when my phone is in my pocket.
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