Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#921

Post by dns_snek » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #912

dns_snek wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not debating the amount of spam but rather GP's claim that iMessage is hard to automate. I showed that iMessage is trivial to automate and since you both claim that the amount of spam on the platform is very low, we can conclude that ease of automation isn't an important factor when it comes to iMessage spam. Unless someone decides to move the goalposts we should therefore be in full agreement that Pebble being a…

It is definitely harder to automate than SMS. Very large companies exist only to provide API-backed support for automated SMS. In contrast you need to hook into Apple APIs / scripting / sqlite databases on trusted apple hardware in order to automate iMessage. You imagine "Pebble" as one company and say "how hard can it be to turn this on?" As I said in the original comment, it's not that it's hard, it's that it can o…

Can you stop moving the goalposts? There's a ready-to-go open source solution for MacOS [1] that exposes a REST API [2] for interacting with iMessage which allows automation and the sky hasn't fallen like you predicted it would. Professional spammers would no doubt be way ahead in capabilities.

Relying on clients to stop spam would break just about every security design principle so that could never be the primary spam filtering mechanism. Indeed, if you search Github, you'll find evidence of this [3].

Allowing a third party gadget to talk to an iPhone to send messages isn't going to open the floodgates to spam any more than they already are, for what I think are pretty obvious reasons. Anyone who could exploit those integrations can already exploit current APIs with exactly the same limitations.

> In contrast you need to hook into Apple APIs / scripting / sqlite databases on trusted apple hardware in order to automate iMessage.

And that wouldn't change, you would still need to pair a real iPhone to your fake "spammer edition" Pebble, and then your Apple ID and iPhone would quickly get banned. Presumably just like it does now if you abuse [1][2], otherwise that's just bad design.

It's frankly ridiculous that this is even being suggested on a "hacker" forum with nothing but wishy-washy qualifiers about how easy or "hard" it would be.

[1] https://bluebubbles.app/

[2] https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/765844/UV5RnfwM#0d8e0...

[3] https://github.com/ZekeSnider/Jared/issues/65

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#922

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

Aachen wrote: post #831

boringg wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a walled garden (which is a form of security) but thats also why a lot of people buy their products. Know your demographic.

I don't think anybody buys their product for the specific reason that they can not do certain things. Nobody likes the restrictions. People buy a product because there are features (things they can do) that they want, including intangible features like usability (it's easier to make a full system backup on iOS than on Android, for example) Edit: or maybe I'm wrong. I do know one person who bought a phone because it s…

I have recommended devices in the past to family specifically because of the bad/annoying things those devices don't do, so I, as family IT support, don't have to clean up the fallout.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#923

Post by 9rx » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

throw_a_grenade wrote: post #444

9rx wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what are you supposed to do? Reward the company providing even less of what you want? Assuming it isn't regulation (e.g. patents) getting in the way, you pull up your pants and produce [A, D, and E]. If that's too rich for your blood, I suppose rewarding the company that got you something close enough at a tiny fraction of the cost is reasonable. It is hard to deny the value in that. > What you need is more competi…

Eric did exactly what you suggest, and found out he can't really build it without permission from the manufacturer. So no, you can't just pull up the pants.

You'd only need permission if regulation required it, and we already excepted where regulation is what is getting in the way. So, no, you can pull up your pants just fine.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#924

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 2:54 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #287

amiga386 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: Have the iPhone pop up saying "do you want to be able to send messages?" and let the user decide which devices can send their phone messages. Step 2: Have the iPhone pop up saying "do you want to be able to send messages?" and don't just assume "yes" Both steps would improve security, even if they harm Apple's profits.

We have decades of experience that users will blindly click whatever prompts they need to make the app work.

You're getting dumped on here but you're absolutely right. Anyone who has been in software for any amount of time knows this, too. HN is full of software developers--downvoters should know better.

You can put a button in your app that says "Tapping this will drain your bank account and give you cancer" but if it also enables functionality that the user wants, they will tap it.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#925

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 3:04 PM UTC

rkagerer wrote: post #814

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…

untrusted hardware That's the root of the problem right there. As a hardware vendor, how do you achieve a "trusted" status in their ecosystem? If only Apple devices can do the Appley things, then it really isn't an ecosystem (at least not what I have in mind when applying that term).

I wouldn't trust most hardware vendors with my wifi password, let alone access to my phone's messages. Hardware vendors have shown time and time again that they don't care about privacy or security. All they care about is shipping their widget and getting you to buy it, and to do that, they will cut corners, ship defective firmware, use easily guessed default passwords, and turn a blind eye to abuse.

As a hardware vendor, you'd achieve "trusted" status by having a decades-long track record of not doing these things.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#926

Post by jobs_throwaway » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #445

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see how you can be a monopoly with nearly 2/3 market share and 2.5x market size of your next-largest competitor? You must not be very imaginative

Some other companies with similar market share: - Coca Cola - DoorDash - Adobe - Tesla - Canon digital cameras I guess we should break all them up too.

If they start acting anti-competitively, we 100% should break them up

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#927

Post by jobs_throwaway » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

op00to wrote: post #641

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'If you don't like our business practices, don't buy from Standard Oil' type argument

Apple has a monopoly on mobile devices?

They have dominant market position on mobile phones in the US which allows them to act anti-competitively, yes

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#928

Post by rowanG077 » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 3:39 PM UTC

noodletheworld wrote: post #795

rowanG077 wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you choose to ignore the very next statement in their post, that ensures it cannot be spammed? Doesn't seem like you are arguing in good faith here.

I don't think this is a reasonable take (and also doesn't make sense). If you read the other comments here its extremely clear to everyone that no one here is seriously concerned about your watch sending spam. If you 'opt-out' then it does not fix the problem of spammers having easier access to imessage. I'll say that again : If you personally, either a) opt out, or b) dont have a watch at all , it makes no differenc…

I don't see this at all. No one is talking about anyone being able to access to iMessage. No one has a problem for example if you simply require an apple account. No one expect to just be able to do post(number, message).

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#929

Post by nunez » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 3:39 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #813

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…

Apple Propaganda. There's extremely few reasons why a modern Android phone from Google or Samsung is less secure than an iPhone, against any attack vector that 99.sevennines% of people [1] would ever experience. The worst way I've ever seen the most tech-illiterate person ever mess up an Android phone is by installing some QR Code reader that took over as a home screen launcher so it could (nonmaliciously, but questi…

Replacing a launcher can be pretty bad.

This happened to people I know. Some innocent sounding app replaced their launcher and added a fake Gmail widget to their home screen. It prompted them to login and, well, you know the rest.

This would never happen on iOS because you can't change the launcher.

Re: Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

#930

Post by babypuncher » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 3:46 PM UTC

rickdeckard wrote: post #595

babypuncher wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that nobody makes a smart watch as good as the Apple Watch, so people already in the ecosystem have no real reason to care that it's their only option. There's a reason Linus Sebastian has been wearing Apple Watches for years despite being a self-proclaimed Android fanboy. This is only getting attention now because these new Pebble devices are offering an Apple Watch alternative people actually…

The article is literally describing aspects where Apple prevents competitors to offer a COMPARABLE experience to an Apple Watch on iOS. There is no equal opportunity to compete in the market of iOS users if you try to compete with Apple. I think that's part of the problem.

I'm saying that even without those restrictions, the existing stable of Android Wear devices would still be less appealing than an Apple Watch. There's a reason they aren't even all that popular with actual Android users where those restrictions don't exist.