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Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

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Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#501

Post by kbutler »

enos_feedler wrote: post #338
grishka wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so that's why I never liked nor trusted this whole idea of code signing with non-self-signed certificates, especially on desktop OSes. This notarization mechanism introduced a single point of failure: Apple. And now there is concrete evidence of how exactly this is bad. On a device I own, there should be no parties that are trusted more than myself. It's ridiculous I even have to write this.

I trust the device maker more than myself to keep my data safe and secure.

Do you then agree with the decision to prevent installation of Fortnite or any other software from which Apple wants to extract more revenue?

Because Apple has shown that they will use that mechanism to exert commercial control, not just to secure your data.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#502

Post by peapicker »

Hamuko wrote: post #290
baddox wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being banned from the iOS App Store also doesn't make your software unusable on Windows, or Mac, or any other non-iOS platform. The App Store's exclusivity is precisely the same as that of nearly every video game console.

The fact that Apple is going to kill Epic Games' ability to notarize macOS apps does actually make their software unusable on Macs.

Nope. I personally run with this setting:

https://it.nmu.edu/docs/allowing-third-party-applications-in...

Amazingly it then lets me run all the open source I want that I download from the internet but am too lazy to build myself.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#503

Post by count »

Hamuko wrote: post #290
baddox wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being banned from the iOS App Store also doesn't make your software unusable on Windows, or Mac, or any other non-iOS platform. The App Store's exclusivity is precisely the same as that of nearly every video game console.

The fact that Apple is going to kill Epic Games' ability to notarize macOS apps does actually make their software unusable on Macs.

No, it doesn't. It just means it's users have to take extra steps. I use non-notarized software every day on a Mac.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#504

Post by zucker42 »

fireattack wrote: post #445
jedberg wrote: post #3

It's fascinating to see the replies to the tweets. It appears most people don't care. They just want their game to work. A lesson in how your customers don't care about how your product is made.

This doesn't surprise me in any bit, but I don't understand why people on HN, a much better informed audience, keep defending Apple's walled garden practice until now, while being very critical against any slightly anti-competitive conduct Google, Facebook, or Amazon did/do.

The people defending Apple are different from the people attacking Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#505

Post by axlee »

ryandrake wrote: post #449
_qulr wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notarization is about protecting users who are not capable of making an informed decision about code safety from developers who refuse to comply with Apple's terms of service. No, notarization is about preventing malware. That's all. This has been promised to us by Apple many many times. Malware prevention only. Fortnite is not malware.

An application that suddenly changes behavior due to no action taken by the user, triggered remotely by the developer, is getting very close to the "malware" line in my book.

Any automatic software is a malware, according to that definition. That's weak.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#506

Post by dreamcompiler »

grishka wrote: post #280
amaccuish wrote: post #97

What took me aback was the withdrawing permission to notarise their apps for Mac. That was only meant to be a check for known vulnerabilities/malicious software. Apple was more within their rights to kick Fortnite until the dust has settled from the iOS store, that was the retaliation, but now a mechanism supposedly for security has been repurposed as punishment. That's a pretty nasty move and I feel the mask has sli…

And so that's why I never liked nor trusted this whole idea of code signing with non-self-signed certificates, especially on desktop OSes. This notarization mechanism introduced a single point of failure: Apple. And now there is concrete evidence of how exactly this is bad. On a device I own, there should be no parties that are trusted more than myself. It's ridiculous I even have to write this.

> On a device I own...

And that's the issue. The overwhelming body of evidence in recent years suggests Apple does not consider the devices they make to be "yours." Rather, their attitude seems to be that those devices forever belong to Apple, and Apple simply allows you to pay for the privilege of using them.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#507

Post by sudosysgen »

ernst_klim wrote: post #435
grishka wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let them install that malware and have their data stolen despite all warnings because they deserve it? We can't have safety nets everywhere, and we, in fact, don't. We allow everyone to drive, use knives and handle all kinds of potentially dangerous stuff every day, but for some reason can't trust them with their own phones. Some mistakes are costly, but people learn from them. Such is life.

> We allow everyone to drive, use knives Ah, these are pretty simple things. We don't allow to sell any drugs, or some drugs without prescription, because drugs are hard and require education. So do computers.

The risk coming from malware to end users on laptops is about 0.1% of the risk from cars, and following the message in scary red letters is pretty simple too.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#508

Post by heavyset_go »

chillacy wrote: post #397
gruez wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That advice might be feasible for the average HN reader, but what about the average person? How resistant do you think they will be against a social engineering attack telling them to disable code signing?

Some sites have big scary warnings if you try to open the dev console in the page for this reason. I don't know how well that works though. We can put all the warnings on bleach we want, someone out there is still going to drink it.

> We can put all the warnings on bleach we want, someone out there is still going to drink it.

If we went with the Apple solution, this means nobody gets to use bleach.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#509

Post by _qulr »

ryandrake wrote: post #449
_qulr wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notarization is about protecting users who are not capable of making an informed decision about code safety from developers who refuse to comply with Apple's terms of service. No, notarization is about preventing malware. That's all. This has been promised to us by Apple many many times. Malware prevention only. Fortnite is not malware.

An application that suddenly changes behavior due to no action taken by the user, triggered remotely by the developer, is getting very close to the "malware" line in my book.

Mac malware, come on. There's no Developer ID or notarization on iOS, it's App Store only.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#510

Post by drawkbox »

> "Millions of developers rely on the Unreal Engine to develop software, and hundreds of millions of consumers use that software," argues Epic.

> "Developers that intend to sell their apps for use on iOS or macOS devices will have to forgo the Unreal Engine in favor of other engines," reads the motion.

That is what I was expecting after Epic went after Apple. They had to know it would hurt them and all the devs using the engine.

Unity many times has feared not being able to build to Apple like in 2010 for the JIT/AOT item which led to more AOT and eventually C++ IL2CPP to get the requirement of native over virtual machine based engines (it was ultimately unnecessary and later Mono included AOT). [1]

Epic had to know this would be VERY risky and now they have put all their devs at risk who target iOS. Who knows that type of fallout this will have long term. It is a battle of greed and not better products and that is what sucks. I don't like the way Epic is going about this at all. Not only is Epic being used by Tencent, they are using devs and their engine to mount a greed based attack on Apple.

No one is happy fully with all the App Store rules, and likewise no one is happy with all the Epic Game Store rules, but the platform maker has immense power and Epic knew what would happen. They pull the same type of stuff like when they blocked Miguel de Icaza's Mono/C# extension to UnrealEngine. https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/1294445857266372611

Yeah I mean look at what Epic/Tencent did, they baited Apple hard. This was a play all along.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/12939179293654138...

The worst is Epic/Tencent is going about this like they are doing it altruisitcally when their end goal is more power/take. They want their own app store on Apple and they want to have their own approval and their own take (Epic store is 12% as they are trying to catch Steam/Origin/others).

Thanks for thinking of the devs Tencent/Epic /s

The biggest bummer is I really look up to Tim Sweeney and respect all he has done for gaming. I hate that he ok'd this. Epic has 3 seats on the board and Tencent has 2, with 2 "observers" which are probably Tencent loyal. So at some point along the line Sweeney had to ok this... Looks like the Tencent money leverage got to him. He knew this would cause problems for devs that chose HIS engine. Why Tim Why. The battle of the Tims but ultimately greed that I am sure will lead to regulation that makes it worse for devs long term.

[1] https://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/07/02/unity-and-ios-4-0-updat...

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