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Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

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Re: Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

#571

Post by ViViDboarder »

tokyodude wrote: post #545

Apple is likely going to be sued by FB and Google and eventually they will lose the control over their platform. Yes the terms are in the TOS. Those terms should be illegal. Same as say non-competes are illegal in some places. No company should have that kind of power. And, before you say it's the same as some company turning off your net based account, no it is not. For example if you upload porn to flickr and they…

Apple offers a program for doing public betas: https://developer.apple.com/testflight/

Google and Facebook appear to have used a different method of distribution than this and thus violated their terms.

Re: Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

#572

Post by walterbell »

saagarjha wrote: post #168
klodolph wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I quite understand your complaint about the Mac's App Store. I want to have free reign on my workstation, but part of that is I want to be able to limit the amount of access that programs have. The big difference with the App Store, from my perspective, is that I know that the applications are sandboxed, signed, and someone out there can revoke the code signing certificate. This is basically what I want,…

Fun fact: not all apps on the App Store are sandboxed. Some older apps, that were released before sandboxing was a requirement, were "grandfathered" in.

Any examples?

Re: Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

#573

Post by rootusrootus »

dkrich wrote: post #444
rootusrootus wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Apple sees Facebook as any kind of threat. There is already a far more plausible messaging bridge from iOS to Android called Hangouts and it hasn't really been effective for that. People aren't staying with iPhone because they're trapped by imessage.

Agree to disagree. Messenger and WhatsApp are more advanced and combine the social dynamic to chats. They’ve also made a lot of headway in competing with FaceTime. Which apps would Apple have a distinct advantage of it loses iMessage and FaceTime? Edit: to elaborate I don’t mean a direct bridge to android, rather a substitute for iMessage that’s available on iOS and Android which makes switching relatively painless.

In my experience, it is not a tech problem. Equivalents absolutely exist. They may even be superior, although us tech folk tend to focus on features and not usability, and then we are surprised why regular folk don't like what we've built. In any case, when I switch out of the iPhone world, a solid half my contacts are unavailable to chat with except by old-school texts, and no equivalent for FaceTime. Some family members I switched over to Hangouts, but since they only use it for me, they forget about it, or how it works.

Every iPhone can do iMessage and FaceTime out of the box. That is a meaningful advantage for Apple, I think. Making something good enough that your users don't want to go find something 'better' and then making it 100% universal makes a strong ecosystem.

Re: Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

#575

Post by aasasd »

kd0amg wrote: post #570
aasasd wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> public data that EVERYONE can see The entire concept of law is based on the premise that not everything that is physically possible should be permitted.

The web makes things interesting in that OP's hypothetical company only has that data because Facebook willingly gives it to everyone who asks. It would be obviously wrong if they were using some exploit to trick Facebook's servers into divulging secrets.

> gives it to everyone who asks

Yeah nah, that's where the concept of agreements comes in. You walk up to Fes Boock and say:

― I want to have business with Fes Boock.

― Fes Boock will have business with you if you promise to not stab Fes Boock in the back.

― I give my word to not stab Fes Boock in the back.

Turns out, this thing is so valuable, it's supported by law everywhere that I know of, in multiple forms, including rather implicit ones such as “ToS.” Which is what allows Fes to sue the stabbing bastard.

Re: Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

#576

Post by _bxg1 »

stetrain wrote: post #566
_bxg1 wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They revoked Google's certificate after they'd already taken down their app. This was supposed to be punishment for crossing the line; apparently it was just a fluffy PR move.

Revoking the certificate deals with the apps that have already been signed with that certificate. Google taking it down doesn't remove it from the devices where it has already been installed or prevent it being distributed by other means. Revoking the certificate does. In both cases Apple has reached an agreement to issue new enterprise certs for both companies. They can now use those certs for their approved purpose…

Ah. Thanks for clarifying. I thought they were just un-revoking the other one, which would've made this a pretty empty wrist-slap.

Re: Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

#577

Post by bestnameever »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #405
eanzenberg wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> In one sense, Apple already gives up a data feed by sending search queries to Google. Apple does this under protest. Their top search queries are served through siri lately, and the hope is siri will replace all search so they won't need to utilize google anymore.

Siri isn't a search engine, it is a front end to a search engine[1]. That used to be Bing but now it is Google (see: http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/google-bing-default-iphone/ ) There was a time when the Siri folks approached Blekko (which was an actual search engine with its own index, crawler, and ranking Etc. to discuss partnering with Apple (personally I think they should have bought us :-)) But, according to peop…

I really can't see how Apple can continue to competitive with Siri without entering the search business (or partnering with another)

I've noticed several times now where Google assistant has been able to answer questions about things in almost real time all thanks to Google's crawlers.

My friend asked it earlier whether USPS delivers mail during a polar vortex and Google assistant told them they didn't yesterday, at least in Chicago.

Re: Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

#579

Post by ei8htyfi5e »

askafriend wrote: post #43

Let’s say you’re using a Google API like Maps, and you violate terms by snapshotting sections of their maps and storing them on your severs so you can serve static maps without making API calls. They’d shut down your API access immediately Google and Facebook both knew the terms. They both knew that the Enterprise Distribution Program was for internal use only. They still put ads out in the wild to recruit regular co…

I scraped google API exactly like this in grad school, but sometimes when you're building, you take a calculated risk to build something better.

For my thesis, I was trying to load two Street View photos side by side in a browser to compare people's perceptions side-by-side. Google maps at the time required you to load a javascript viewer for each image you requested. Think Hot-or-Not for cities.

The experience needed to instantly load a new image after the user voted because I knew they were only going to be on the site for maybe 30 seconds before they got bored and went back to reddit. I needed to collect as many votes as possible within that time period.

So I knowingly broke Google's ToS and prefetched the images on my server so I could provide the user experience I wanted. "I'm a small operation. Surely they won't know." I wrote a server side screen scraper to load the Street View images and exposed the scraped images with an API.

Now my site was faaaast. I could load Street View images instantly and in the end got over a million data points doing this.

But then one day soon after it stopped working. Then I got a cease and desist email from someone at google legal. They didn't respond to any requests for turning it back on or even to discuss. Radio silence. That was terrifying.

Since this was my thesis, I needed help getting my keys turned back on. Google in the end was very accommodating, but only after I used my nuclear option: asking lab director Joi Ito to bug Megan Smith while she was still at Google to help.

I was connected to some engineer and told them what I was doing and why. They said stop. But then a week or so later, they sent me a beta invite to their new Street View images api, where you can feed in a lat, lng, header to a query string and they'll just serve the image now. Pretty cool.

Offending site for the interested: http://pulse.media.mit.edu/

Re: Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

#580

Post by peteretep »

jmanderley wrote: post #556
mirimir wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and more to the point, they cut off Facebook and Google for distributing unreviewed apps to the general public. So the violation was using the enterprise key to evade app review by Apple. Which Apple does to protect its customers. And so Apple is just protecting its customers.

Facebook already got their access back, I assume the block on Google won't last all that long, either.

Presumably FB got it back after signing in blood that they were only going to use this for internal, non-public releases
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