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Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

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Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#671

Post by The_Blade »

Zak wrote: post #366
tremon wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize this is a very infantilizing attitude? Why can't the end user choose its own level of security vs usability? Letting a corporation decide this for all users is just creating a nanny state in different clothing.

While I agree with you (I daily a rooted Android phone), anyone who cleaned up a few Windows machines for non-technical people 20 years ago probably at least understands where Apple is coming from. The average person is really bad at system administration, and it doesn't take many bad actors creating malware and scams to have a big impact.

> The average person is really bad at system administration

the average person doesn't even understand the basic concept of what the average HN reader considers system administration, and we're wrong anyway eh

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#672

Post by NotPractical »

vv_ wrote: post #647
NotPractical wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people can simply switch to an Android phone Giving all your data to Google (an adtech company) is not an acceptable solution. Not to mention that it's incredibly difficult to leave the Apple ecosystem, by design.

Apple is bad. Google (Android) is bad. So what is the solution here for the common non-tech savvy smartphone user?

I would say that custom Android-based ROMs like GrapheneOS are the solution, but Google is actively sabotaging those with the Play Integrity API so I don't know if they will be usable by the average person in the long-term (unless Google is legally compelled to stop this).

So honestly I think that legislation such as what's happening in the EU is the only solution. This includes investigating Google as well as Apple. I'm not a huge fan of legislation in general but the current state of mobile computing is depressingly bad right now.

> However, I find it a bit of a stretch to claim that having iMessage access on a smartwatch is essential for being a functional member of society.

Btw I agree here. Perhaps the EU is being a little too overbearing in some aspects, but most of it is good. I think in this case Pebble is trying to take advantage of the existing interoperability provisions, which are a general framework allowing devs to request access to certain functions. However the EU has said that they want to target smartwatches in particular which sounds like misplaced priority to me...

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#673

Post by golergka »

bigyabai wrote: post #474
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…

[flagged]

> Your security is nonexistent unless you disable iMessage and JS in Safari, even then Uncle Sam has Five Eyes watching your every move for any traces of "terrorist" support.

Your security is non-existed until you've established a realistic threat model. And if it includes targeted surveillance by nation-state actors, you've got bigger OPSEC problems than just your phone.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#675

Post by cozzyd »

stouset wrote: post #640
mistercheph wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never needed speeds in excess of usb 2.0? LOL, this is such old hat, guys in IBM t-shirts telling me how nobody ever needed more than 64K, and why go third party with your treasured computation when you can get the best, the infallible, the International Business Machine?

Apple didn't continue to iterate on Lightning because of the obvious future migration to USB-C connectors. I will die on the hill that the Lightning plug is superior to the USB-C plug . Lightning could some day have supported USB-3.2+ speeds, if they'd chosen to work further on it. Still, I have never once transferred data to my iPhone over a USB cable. I have used an iPhone since the first generation. For me, it has…

Does the iPhone show up as a USB media device nowadays or do they still force you to jump through hoops?

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#676

Post by golergka »

frollogaston wrote: post #358
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"

I honestly don't care about Microsoft bundling a browser. The real problem was that they intentionally broke web standards to push websites to "work best on Internet Explorer," so even those who chose not to use Windows were caught up in it. Whereas, Android users aren't affected by what Apple does here. They still bundle Edge, and keep setting it to default. But idc, it's just one of 1000 reasons I don't use Windows…

> The real problem was that they intentionally broke web standards to push websites to "work best on Internet Explorer," so even those who chose not to use Windows were caught up in it.

Microsoft tried to build their own extensions to the internet standards, like activex and proprietary DOM/JScript extensions, explicitly designed to lock devs into IE’s ecosystem. It's quite impressive that they managed to miss this opportunity to Adobe. And how Adobe then just... squandered it. I would expect that "being the necessary proprietary piece in significant chunk of internet" would have some deep strategic advantage, but both tech giants couldn't be bothered to do a good job.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#677

Post by s3p »

Reason077 wrote: post #567
vessenes wrote: post #101

I guess I’ll take the contra here on messages integration — moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in the security boundary and therefore security architecture and therefore security promises that apple makes on iMessage. I do not believe average smartwatch users understand what they’d be doing if they got this. I do not believe vendors…

> "One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is that the ecosystem is closed" I don't think that's the main reason. iMessage is available on macOS, so by definition isn't that tightly locked down. Anyone can automate/script the desktop app to try and fire off as many messages as you like. But of course that won't really work because Apple has security algorithms in the network that detect unusual behavi…

Do you have a citation for apple rate-limiting iMessage?

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#678

Post by golergka »

shantara wrote: post #336
Nifty3929 wrote: post #268

I think people forget that Apple is not making devices for the Hackernews community. They are making devices for people that just want something that works pretty well and has reasonable security - even to the extent of protecting them from themselves. They have other things to do with their time than learn about security vulnerabilities and how to avoid them. They want to just click 'yes' on every popup and expect t…

We’re rapidly approaching the point where having a smartphone is becoming a necessity for being a functional part of the society. You could argue that is some countries we’re already past that point. A device of this social importance that’s also locked into one of the two American megacorps absolutely needs as much scrutiny as possible, since the interests of those megacorps are not aligned with the interests of the…

It took a 100 years from first phone public networks in the 1880s to the basic expectation that you would have a phone number in 1980s. Public internet came this way in ~20 years (early 90s-early 10s). Smartphones did it in 15?

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#679

Post by Dylan16807 »

ketzo wrote: post #624
rezonant wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Apple's BT stack is crap? Because that's the one that is in control here...

No, the vendor's BT stack would be responsible for broadcasting any responses back to the device -- like, in the article, "send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying)"

And Apple's BT stack would be responsible for receiving those responses.

If it rejects messages with improper encryption, the watch won't get programmed to send them.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#680

Post by macrocosmos »

frollogaston wrote: post #666
macrocosmos wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We’re in agreement that it is a viewpoint. I think it’s bad for productive conversation to state viewpoints as absolute facts that everyone else holds.
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