4 ms·

I guess they could have made that impossible to begin with. But, you know, reasons.

favorited 8y ago
That's really not possible. It would be pretty trivial for an app to to capture screenshots by drawing their own main window into a bitmap and composite those screenshots into a video. iOS has system frameworks to make both drawing and video composition easy.
- byron_fast 8y ago
  It is possible. They specifically make it possible for bad actors.
  - favorited 8y ago
    How? (1) Views can draw into bitmap contexts. (2) Those can be used to create images. (3) Then you make a video and add each image as a frame. Which one of those 3 simple things should be disabled? Because I use all 3 independently in an app I work on... If you have those 3 ingredients, you can make a screen recording.
    - byron_fast 8y ago
      Yep, you are correct. If you output to an output device, it can be used for bad. The question is how hard can you make it at that point - to show that only the marketeers are using it.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      This is one of those things that needs to be dealt with by legal action. You can't make most kinds of apps without also making it possible to record the screen but you can make recording the screen illegal until the user accepts and require that the user can deny it and continue to use the app.
gok 8y ago
How would you do that? If code can render something to a screen, how would you prevent it from rendering to a video?
- byron_fast 8y ago
  The point is to not make it so easy. It doesn't need to be easy, or automatable.
  - anyfoo 8y ago
    Elaborate?
  - mikestew 8y ago
    You can make it hard as you like, but if it's still possible then someone will wrap it with a nice API and documentation, maybe even sell it and make bank, and you're back to where you started.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  and that's NOT what these tools are doing. That would be a huge waste of data. They're just tracking which UI components you touch, the timing and inputs. It's more like recording an RDP session, not full on screen captures. You can compress a lot of that data and it would be difficult to detect without installing CA certs and using a MITM-proxy.

That's really not possible. It would be pretty trivial for an app to to capture screenshots by drawing their own main window into a bitmap and composite those screenshots into a video. iOS has system frameworks to make both drawing and video composition easy.

byron_fast 8y ago
It is possible. They specifically make it possible for bad actors.
- favorited 8y ago
  How? (1) Views can draw into bitmap contexts. (2) Those can be used to create images. (3) Then you make a video and add each image as a frame. Which one of those 3 simple things should be disabled? Because I use all 3 independently in an app I work on... If you have those 3 ingredients, you can make a screen recording.
  - byron_fast 8y ago
    Yep, you are correct. If you output to an output device, it can be used for bad. The question is how hard can you make it at that point - to show that only the marketeers are using it.
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    This is one of those things that needs to be dealt with by legal action. You can't make most kinds of apps without also making it possible to record the screen but you can make recording the screen illegal until the user accepts and require that the user can deny it and continue to use the app.

gok 8y ago

How would you do that? If code can render something to a screen, how would you prevent it from rendering to a video?

byron_fast 8y ago
The point is to not make it so easy. It doesn't need to be easy, or automatable.
- anyfoo 8y ago
  Elaborate?
- mikestew 8y ago
  You can make it hard as you like, but if it's still possible then someone will wrap it with a nice API and documentation, maybe even sell it and make bank, and you're back to where you started.
djsumdog 8y ago
and that's NOT what these tools are doing. That would be a huge waste of data. They're just tracking which UI components you touch, the timing and inputs. It's more like recording an RDP session, not full on screen captures. You can compress a lot of that data and it would be difficult to detect without installing CA certs and using a MITM-proxy.