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These are complaints about visibility. Can you market it yourself? Then the app store provides cryptographically-signed peace of mind to users that they can use

by kranner 10y ago

These are complaints about visibility. Can you market it yourself? Then the app store provides cryptographically-signed peace of mind to users that they can use your app without their contacts stolen or their phones hijacked.

sjtgraham 10y ago
Unfortunately this is far from true. It's trivial use private APIs and beat AppStore static analysis. There is also a MITM attack on FairPlay DRM that has enabled malware to be installed via AppStore apps.
- kranner 10y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of the latter, but looks like it requires a user to install a Windows client called 爱思助手 (Aisi Helper), purportedly for jailbreaking etc., then connect their iOS device to a Windows PC running this software. So it's hardly a typical case. Reference: http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2016/03/acedeceiver-first-ios-trojan-exploiting-apple-drm-design-flaws-to-infect-any-ios-device/ http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2016/03/acedeceiv... Regarding the former, yes it may be possible to hardcode addresses for private APIs and target specific devices running specific iOS versions, but Apple routinely weeds these out. Edit: I assume Apple weeds these out. I have no reference for this. I realize it's not bulletproof, but it's still good enough to trust for me as an iOS user compared to the Android phone I was using until last year.
jsemrau 10y ago
The problem with visibility is the following. Let's say you make a commercial/web-ad/etc for App "A". The customer would with 0.05% probability click the link, but maybe remembers the name. So now in their spare time they would think, let's look for this app "A" ? so they input the name and only "B","C", and "D" that have nothing to do with "A" came up, that would be not that good, right? A real world equivalent would be: You are in a supermarket and want to buy "A" beer because you heard the radio commercial and the assistant guides you to the vegetable, the ice-cream, and the raw meat section but neither to "A" nor the beer section. So you need to know before you newly discover "A" in the beer section that there is a beer section and that "A" is the beer to try. If there are now 20,000 beers that is your problem right there. In comparison, on Amazon it is more effective to find products through recommendations and "similar products" which help customers find new products. The app discovery path does not work in the app store.
- kranner 10y ago
  OK, I agree that finding a particular app by name has been broken for a long time in the app store.
ytpete 10y ago
> peace of mind to users that they can use your app without their contacts stolen or their phones hijacked I think you can get that part without requiring the bottleneck of a single, hand-curated app store. The OS sandboxes app processes and blocks them from accessing user information without getting permission first - if that's done well, no app review is needed to ensure apps can't hijack your data.

by kranner 10y ago

sjtgraham 10y ago

Unfortunately this is far from true. It's trivial use private APIs and beat AppStore static analysis. There is also a MITM attack on FairPlay DRM that has enabled malware to be installed via AppStore apps.

kranner 10y ago
Thanks, I wasn't aware of the latter, but looks like it requires a user to install a Windows client called 爱思助手 (Aisi Helper), purportedly for jailbreaking etc., then connect their iOS device to a Windows PC running this software. So it's hardly a typical case. Reference: http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2016/03/acedeceiver-first-ios-trojan-exploiting-apple-drm-design-flaws-to-infect-any-ios-device/ http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2016/03/acedeceiv... Regarding the former, yes it may be possible to hardcode addresses for private APIs and target specific devices running specific iOS versions, but Apple routinely weeds these out. Edit: I assume Apple weeds these out. I have no reference for this. I realize it's not bulletproof, but it's still good enough to trust for me as an iOS user compared to the Android phone I was using until last year.

jsemrau 10y ago

The problem with visibility is the following. Let's say you make a commercial/web-ad/etc for App "A". The customer would with 0.05% probability click the link, but maybe remembers the name. So now in their spare time they would think, let's look for this app "A" ? so they input the name and only "B","C", and "D" that have nothing to do with "A" came up, that would be not that good, right? A real world equivalent would be: You are in a supermarket and want to buy "A" beer because you heard the radio commercial and the assistant guides you to the vegetable, the ice-cream, and the raw meat section but neither to "A" nor the beer section. So you need to know before you newly discover "A" in the beer section that there is a beer section and that "A" is the beer to try. If there are now 20,000 beers that is your problem right there. In comparison, on Amazon it is more effective to find products through recommendations and "similar products" which help customers find new products. The app discovery path does not work in the app store.

kranner 10y ago
OK, I agree that finding a particular app by name has been broken for a long time in the app store.

ytpete 10y ago

> peace of mind to users that they can use your app without their contacts stolen or their phones hijacked I think you can get that part without requiring the bottleneck of a single, hand-curated app store. The OS sandboxes app processes and blocks them from accessing user information without getting permission first - if that's done well, no app review is needed to ensure apps can't hijack your data.