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Rethinking the App Store

stratechery.com

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Re: Rethinking the App Store

#41

Post by vanviegen »

rimliu wrote: post #7
cesher wrote: post #4

I love Stratechery, but I think this one gets it wrong. Think of App Store as three products: 1. App quality screening 2. App promotion/distribution 3. In app purchasing Ask any reasonable dev if they are willing to foot a fixed cost to get their app screened, a fixed cost per app download (bandwidth), and variable cost to get their app promoted in the store (not everyone needs this) and they would agree. What pisses…

I am considering building some paid apps for the App Store. If I had to deal with payment processors, handling subscriptions, etc. myself there is zero chances I'd do that.

There are quite a few providers that make this very easy to do. Apple isn't one of them.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#42

Post by lloeki »

supermatt wrote: post #13

I am of the opinion that the only fair option is to allow 3rd party stores with the same permissions as the official app store. Apples curation isn't (as they suggest) preventing malware, theft of information, etc - this if verifiably false given recent history with apps like tiktok stealing clipboard content. The ability to change content of payment screens post-approval (as epic have just done) also means that cura…

> Apples curation isn't (as they suggest) preventing malware, theft of information, etc - this if verifiably false given recent history with apps like tiktok stealing clipboard

There are many things that go wrong with the App Store, but you have to realise this is a ludicrous assertion. Pasting from clipboard is an entirely different class than rootkits, backdoors, trojans, and other malware that have a vanishingly small chance to go through the review process itself.

This is defence in depth. The sandbox helps, but it’s not magic. Without review, publishing an app with a sandbox bypass, or simply abusing entitlements, becomes trivial.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#43

Post by throwaway13337 »

willvarfar wrote: post #32

I'm divided. As a programmer, I'm as happy as a pig in mud in the low-level innards of my computers and operating systems, and like that I can get at them etc. That's why I have linux on my desktop. But 'open' systems don't work out well for 'normal' users. Remember the viruses and trojans and instability and all the rest of the Windows days, or Android? I want my parents and friends and everyone else to use an iphon…

You can have your cake and eat it.

Sandboxing-type security is damn good on mobile OSes.

We tend to associate desktop with the insecure but it's not because of the lack of an app store. It's because desktop OSes do not sandbox, ask user permission, etc. Modern mobile OSes do so it's really night and day.

This takes care of 90% of why mobile OSes are more secure than desktop ones - not app stores.

I'm sure that there are other security concerns. I have security concerns about my house. I wouldn't like a camera in my house going to the police because of it. Some people would. But neither party should be forced into one way or the other. Let's give them a choice.

Let's allow third party app stores.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#44

Post by neiman »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #31
neiman wrote: post #21

Fantastically well-written article. The "problem" with forming an opinion about Apple Store rules is that the users are willingly and knowingly putting themselves in the golden cage of apple by buying an iPhone. Under this view the problem is not with Apple, that created a framework that users want, and communicate accurately to its customers what they get - but rather with the app developers, who wants to reach Appl…

This is a bad argument that comes up over and over. You could use the exact same logical framework to argue against labor laws because employees willingly enter into the bargain. It's easy to see the ends of completely unregulated capitalism with company towns, company scrip, and the oppression that comes with it. We've had this history - we don't need it again.

I see the comparison, but in this case what Apple offer is on of their main selling arguments, not something users are tricked into.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#45

Post by threeseed »

AriaMinaei wrote: post #16

One idea I don't see discussed is that the App Store model is a disincentive for Apple to come up with better sandboxing and security. Apple is in fact uniquely positioned to introduce a better sandboxing model. They control most of the stack, crucially the CPU and the build toolchain, not to mention the PL. They could, were they not so reliant on the App Store auditing process, make it less likely for people to deve…

Any chance you can dispel with the meaningless buzzwords ?

"Abstractions around processes and IPC" does not reduce the number of malware and privacy invasive apps. And who knows what "virtualization and capabilities" even means in the context of iOS.

It has been limiting and securing access to APIs/data that has been responsible for improving the privacy and security of iOS. For example warning about use of clipboard, per-use permission dialogs for contacts/photos/etc and randomising identifiers.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#46

Post by realusername »

rimliu wrote: post #7
cesher wrote: post #4

I love Stratechery, but I think this one gets it wrong. Think of App Store as three products: 1. App quality screening 2. App promotion/distribution 3. In app purchasing Ask any reasonable dev if they are willing to foot a fixed cost to get their app screened, a fixed cost per app download (bandwidth), and variable cost to get their app promoted in the store (not everyone needs this) and they would agree. What pisses…

I am considering building some paid apps for the App Store. If I had to deal with payment processors, handling subscriptions, etc. myself there is zero chances I'd do that.

There are plenty of payment processor platforms other than Apple, if the mobile market was opened, you could checkout if Stripe better suits your needs.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#47

Post by realusername »

threeseed wrote: post #29
supermatt wrote: post #13

I am of the opinion that the only fair option is to allow 3rd party stores with the same permissions as the official app store. Apples curation isn't (as they suggest) preventing malware, theft of information, etc - this if verifiably false given recent history with apps like tiktok stealing clipboard content. The ability to change content of payment screens post-approval (as epic have just done) also means that cura…

Part of Apple's security does in fact come from the curation process. Access to private APIs for example is not preventable at runtime due to the way Objective-C works. And the ability to change payment screens etc at runtime has always been possible. But Apple simply bans the developer and so instances of this happening in the wild have been basically non-existant.

> Access to private APIs for example is not preventable at runtime due to the way Objective-C works.

That's on Apple side to fix this, you can compare that to the browser which has a proper sandbox model without private APIs.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#48

Post by randomsearch »

This is really quite a simple problem: the rent is too damn high.

Apple should drop or tier their pricing so that a $10 subscription is paying say 5% to them. Developers are happy. Anyone raking it in pays more, a progressive system that ensures small companies can innovate.

Is this bad for Apple? In the long-term, they get more innovation and a better user experience. Financially, they lose some income on a subset of existing transactions and gain income from transactions they wouldn't have processed, as apps switch to native dev, and the market sizes increase as incentives change.

At the most they could lose a few billion in revenue a year (very unlikely) and gain $0. That's the upper bound. But how many more subscriptions would go through the store if apps like Spotify had signup via the app? I'd guess hundreds of millions of dollars at least, could be much larger in the long-term.

Apple are losing the argument, even the best possible cut isn't worth the reputational damage and harm to the user experience, they should restructure the pricing so they save face and potentially benefit, or at least limit the damage.

The writing is on the wall at this stage, and they will act or be forced to act.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#49

Post by Semaphor »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #33
Hendrikto wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with apps like tiktok stealing clipboard content I do not get the focus on TikTok. Yes, it read your clipboard content… just like Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit, etc. Most security researchers agree that TikTok is among the more restrained social media apps, when it comes to gathering user data. This is a bad look for the social media landscape in general, not TikTok specifically.

But TikTok is Chinese and therefore bad. At least that is what the orange man tells us. Surveillance capitalism is an American invention, China just copied that.

> At least that is what the orange man tells us.

Considering how many hate him here and still repeat the official US talking points wrt TikTok, I don’t think you can blame him in that case.

Re: Rethinking the App Store

#50

Post by fierarul »

Interesting this is not positioned as a civil rights issue too.

I understand, you have a developer company vs Apple.

But what about people buying these computing gadgets? The millions upon millions of them. Shouldn't they have the right to run whatever software they feel like it on this general purpose computing OS without Apple's forced intermediation?

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