Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

ericmigi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#661

Post by tonymet »

ferbivore wrote: post #540
tonymet wrote: post #487

in the 90s there were no APIs you would just debug resident memory and network buffers to reverse engineer the API & IPC Am I old or do people have higher expectations now?

The author of this article was also the CEO of Beeper. They did just that and released an iMessage client for Android in December 2023. Apple proceeded to ban users of that client, launched a smear campaign against the company and implemented countermeasures until Beeper gave up on the whole endeavour. Apple has lots of options at their disposal to frustrate any attempts to reverse engineer their APIs, and have shown…

i wasn't aware of the Beeper affiliation that's helpful context. a good college try.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#662

Post by The_Blade »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #648
lynx97 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably dont get your sarcasm. But I never had a problem with Lightning. In the long run, I like the switch to USB-C... But when I got my first iPhone, USB-C wasn't invented yet, so... Also, I like the AppStore for its reviews, and would actually NEVER activate an alternative appstore. No need to weaken my security on purpose. I know, its apparently an unpopular opinion here, but that is mostly because many people…

Yup, Apple made Lightning because USB-C wasn't a thing yet and MicroUSB is awful. Lightning is a whole lot better than MicroUSB, and they've been using it since 2012 . MiniUSB B was pretty OK, Micro was just way too thin to be stable and would snap off frequently, in addition to being not very secure and hard to orient. Mini was thicker though, so while it worked fine for the HTC Apache and other Windows Mobile phone…

don't let facts and data get in the way of rabble rabble rabble rabble

if the worst thing is someone else's code then someone else's hardware

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#663

Post by jmholla »

shuckles wrote: post #495
mrlatinos wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously know that's not possible. They are private APIs kept for Apple's ecosystem lock-in.

Private API is an oxymoron. If it’s a private implementation, then there’s a lot of work that would need to be done to make it API!

There is no part of the definition of API that requires it to be public. It's Application Programming Interface. You can have internal APIs.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#664

Post by dr_kiszonka »

scosman wrote: post #94
diggan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the classic "Oh, that 3rd party app/feature is so popular, I bet we could build a identical/slightly less useful thing ourselves so people don't have to use other things than Apple software ever"

I've never understood this Apple criticism (scherlocking). Someone built a search for your files, so it's not right for Apple to build a pretty key feature into the OS? There's a lot of fair criticisms of Apple, but they don't have to be absolutely first at everything or never enter the market.

Instead of copying the app, they could have just paid Karelia Software.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#665

Post by macrocosmos »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #408
frollogaston wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to do and fight, use Linux. Apple made their intentions clear decades ago.

Better than voting with your wallet is voting with your vote and getting regulations in place.

You state that as if it is fact despite there being no evidence to support that viewpoint.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#666

Post by frollogaston »

macrocosmos wrote: post #665
_aavaa_ wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than voting with your wallet is voting with your vote and getting regulations in place.

You state that as if it is fact despite there being no evidence to support that viewpoint.

Please don't "source?" this, it's just a viewpoint.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#667

Post by ketzo »

amiga386 wrote: post #639
ketzo wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being sarcastic, but isn't this all just... correct? Yes, I do trust the company that developed Secure Enclave more than I trust random BLE firmware in a $49 Alibaba watch. More importantly -- my great-uncle can trust the same thing, because Apple has spent decades building that trust. Consumers generally should not trust random hardware. Apple is not random hardware.

Google, Samsung, Pebble, Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, etc. have also spent decades building trust and don't build random hardware. But that doesn't matter because Apple locks them all out and insists you remain within their walled garden where it alone profits from you. If you don't want a future where you have to buy Apple milk to put in your Apple fridge (because the fridge stops refrigerating if you try putting any ot…

That’s not the point, though. Any method by which apple exposes APIs to Samsung, Google, etc:

- requires immense development effort and expansion of security surface area

- STILL offloads trust to Samsung, Google, etc

The hyperbole here is a little hysterical. Apple doesn’t totally lock out third parties. In the smartwatch example, it is a very specific set of features which involved passing data (which users expect to be e2e encrypted!) back to Apple. That’s an extremely hostile security environment! Product tradeoffs would absolutely have to be made in order to support arbitrary third parties! I don’t think it’s fair to just demand that Apple make their product worse without at least exploring the balance.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#668

Post by lanyard-textile »

liquid_thyme wrote: post #309
sigmar wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you make that argument for literally any anticompetitive practice? Like in the 1990s: "Microsoft isn't making an OS for people that want to try different browsers"

Yes, you could. It's indeed troubling to see this mindset on HN. We have an overflow of professional "explainers" these days, we need more doers and fighters.

Oh whatever :P Don’t be condescending about a mindset you don’t experience yourself.

I ran debian as my daily driver for like half my life; now I’m on mac and never have to worry about my friggin wifi driver.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#670

Post by Avamander »

nijave wrote: post #463
Avamander wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be, but BT stacks are super crap and it's hard to truly guarantee that. Pretty sure they do not currently require the highest (actually proper) security level from everyone.

Given that Apple controls the entire hardware and software stack, can't they guarantee messages are encrypted and refuse to send them if they aren't? It seems like they're refusing unconditionally and claiming security instead of actually requiring security.

Well they could require a security level for starters and require only secure pairing (the fact that we even have something besides secure pairing should make a few bells ring), but that still leaves a bunch of avenues for an external vendor to fuck up their side of the implementation.

It's a whole another system outside of Apple's control and some mutually agreed upon Bluetooth LE elliptic key does nothing to protect it in its entirety. It still leaves cryptographic mistakes, side-channels and all other vulnerabilities.

Like, what does https:// or transport encryption in general really say about the website's security to you? Not much besides transport, does it?

Now we want to expose more than notification contents over Bluetooth (LE)? Are we sure? It has to be carefully designed.

Post reply on HN