Live data from Hacker News

Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

arstechnica.com

311–320 of 373 posts

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#311

Does this mean we finally get Adblock on iOS devices?

1Blocker is excellent. So is AdGuard Pro. So is NextDNS profile for iOS. And so is Kagi Orion+ browser with Firefox and Chrome extensions like uBlock Origin. Don't drink the "you can'd do that on iPad" koolaid without asking someone unbiased quietly using these things already.

Don't forget that Apple first-party services are exempt from this feature. It is Apple's iPad, after all.

https://twitter.com/mysk_co/status/1683256902484992004

(probably unrelated) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#312
post #67

The iPad App Store is perhaps an even more dysfunctional place than the iPhone in how much it holds hardware and use cases hostage to the manufacturer's vision. Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it in the moments you want to do anything remotely tinkery on an iPad. Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads h…

VMs on iOS: https://getutm.app/ Coding work on iOS: blink shell https://blink.sh/

Lmao at UTM still being harder to install than QEMU

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Users win. The first alt app store didn't even launch and it pressured Apple to change it's review policies TWICE. Once to allow game streaming services, and then to allow game emulators. Hell, even developers won here. 2) How did this play out on every other platform. Sure - piracy exists, but most don't and it's pretty non-impactful AFAICT.

Piracy is not-impactful is not true. The disappearance of indie software that do not depend on a remote server (or that's not software on a remote server) is basically due to the inability to monetize with sales native, stand-alone, software. And that's for the piracy. In some way, the success of the App Store towards indie/solo developers is because there was a way to sell things without the piracy easily steal your…

The only evidence is that developers think they need to do these things because of piracy, which is not the same as actually needing to. A moral panic about a thing does not prove the thing is actually a problem, and the effects of the panic itself shouldn't be blamed on the thing, either.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#314
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then the iPod died.

Yes, exactly, that’s the point. Apple did it to themselves . They didn’t “silo off the two product groups”.

Then either your point is the same as the one I made, or I don't get your point.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#315
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how your risk profile will change if you don’t use the feature?

Someone could steal the iPad and boot a different OS from a hard drive

That’s not what side loading is and that’s not how apple silicon’s secure boot works.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not. If the current price is optimal then it will remain optimal even if costs rise.

That's really not true. The optimal (in the sense of where the supply and demand curves intersect) price for maximum profit rises as costs rise. It's true that the revenue-optimal price remains the same, but I think Apple's shareholders care more about profit than revenue. To build intuition on this, it helps to think about the extreme cases: If the marginal cost of production is zero, you can sell the product for cl…

You are right. My earlier claim is incorrect. It is not a certainty that the optimal price doesn't change when costs rise. It really depends on demand elasticity.

My reasoning was this: If Apple can get away with a higher price without demand dropping off, why would they not charge this higher price in the first place?

But the idea is flawed. Apple could ultimately make more money selling fewer more expensive devices at higher margins than selling more devices at lower margins. So you're absolutely right.

Of course they could also make less profit by protecting their margins. We don't know.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#317
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so sure. From mid-to-late 90s onwards a mobile phone was basically an essential item. I was never tempted to buy an iPod, but combine the phone and iPod and give me internet access to boot... sold.

> I was never tempted to buy an iPod, but combine the phone and iPod and give me internet access to boot... sold. Before the iPhone there were already phones which could play music and access the web. I even remember some Motorolas which interacted directly with iTunes. The iPhone didn’t succeed just by smooshing those together. Either way, that’s neither here nor there, the point is precisely that Apple didn’t shy a…

It was cannibalizing a cheaper iPod for a more expensive iPhone. iPad would be taking from the more expensive MacBook market.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be not be aware of or simply have forgotten ever visiting a friend or family’s computer where all kinds of AskJeeeves toolbars are installed from god knows where. Many people I know managed to have entire pop ups installed soon as they start their computer. I’m not worried about you or me . The EU is just wrong on this one. They are making the worst assumption about the average user, and that’s that they are…

> You may be not be aware of or simply have forgotten ever visiting a friend or family’s computer where all kinds of AskJeeeves toolbars are installed from god knows where. And how are you going to make those OS-wide popups with the iOS sandbox exactly? Be sure that if apps could make it, they already would, appstore reviews or not. There's some very strange communication on Apple side saying simultaneously that thei…

I’ve seen tracking apps that prompt the user to enable a vpn on iOS so all their traffic is routed through them (this was not a vpn app, this was a user tracking app - not malicious. Now imagine a malicious one that doesn’t go through App Store review). The vpn thing on iOS is concerning. The user may not even know or remember they allowed it and it could just be sitting on their phone indefinitely.

I’d like it if Apple restricted VPN access for only App Store approved apps.

Again, it’s not you who I’m concerned about. It’s everyone else. It’s not hard, watch:

here you go dumb teenager, download this crypto app and hit accept on everything and get mining this new alt coin

Boom, vpn enabled and traffic intercepted.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Apple knows iPad might cannibalize mac and limit it's uses on purpose Felt the goal was to overtake Mac during the 2015-2019 era, all the real engineering focus was on iPad, the Macs were underpowered and not really fit for purpose. Why would Apple choose a platform where they don't get 30% of every Creative Cloud sub when they could have had that. Only reason they backtracked was because Mac sales didn't fall…

I believe it's simply more lucrative to keep selling both devices to the same target group, than try to solve the users' problem with a single device. Everything in Apple is designed to silo off the two product groups. An "iPad with MacOS" would just shift revenue from the MacOS division to the iPad division, losing a MacOS customer and probably NOT gaining a iPad customer (as he would have purchased an iPad anyway).…

This is the same reason behind the Apple Pencil not working on the iPhone. Despite the iPhone approaching sizes of an iPad mini, I can't use the incredibly expensive pencil on an iPhone because according to Apple only the iPad should be used for tablet stuff.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#320
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xcode is free but a developer account isn't (nor is an Xbox Dev account either for that matter)

You can sideload apps with a free account, but only 3 signed at once and for a max of 7 days. There are also some entitlements you can’t use.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN