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I worked, briefly, for a mobile app developer that made an app so bad, it regularly bricked phones. There were bugs in the logging that would trash the flash st

I worked, briefly, for a mobile app developer that made an app so bad, it regularly bricked phones. There were bugs in the logging that would trash the flash storage. It would also prevent the radios from entering power save, and floor the CPU (bugs). Within months of use, customer phones would either “explode” from excessive battery drain, “lightly smoke,” or just become inoperable from dead flash storage. I sat in a meeting where the execs were all complaining about Apple’s unfair business practices re: their inability to do terrible things in background tasks, and their frequent app rejections / review process. In this case, Apple saved countless phones from being bricked by one of the worst enterprise app developers. Some of the restrictions help to prevent first class assholes, like them, from publishing wholly defective garbage.

nathan_long 7y ago
That's great. But that sounds like failing to meet what could be an objective quality standard, enforced by something like CI. I don't think anyone objects to that kind of gate keeping. The contention here (true or false) is that Apple tips the scales so that good apps lose to Apple's competing ones.
- mises 7y ago
  On what is Apple competing with respect to apps? I know they've got a few, like garage band, but they make money regardless of which app is purchased.
  - salamander014 7y ago
    Their Music app versus Spotify, their Photos app versus Google Photos, their News app versus NPR... And that's not everything.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      Is there any app that they make big money off of that they're competing on? serious question. Not being argumentative. Trying to get a picture of how much of Apple's hundreds of billions these apps are.
      - esc861 7y ago
        Apple Music. Their services are making up a growing percentage of their revenue: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/01/30/apple-music-50-million-subscribers/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/01/30/apple-music-50-m...
        bilbo0s 7y ago
        Is there one that is bigger than that? Because several sources are claiming that Apple Music represents less than 1% of Apple's value or whatever. I guess what I'm wondering is if there is an app that would induce a company to cheat to try to juice it? Something like MS cheating with DOS and Windows to try to juice Excel vs Lotus?
chmod775 7y ago
> Within months of use, customer phones would either “explode” from excessive battery drain, “lightly smoke,” or just become inoperable from dead flash storage. Seems more like bad software exposing lightly defective hardware. These are issues that could be prevented by the manufacturer on either hardware or software level in many different ways. If you have to trust userspace applications to not trash your hardware, you (Apple) are doing something wrong. They're not even hard problems. You can prevent any of these with a post-release over-the-air update. There would be a cost to your benchmarking scores, obviously. But what good is top-tier performance when you can observe your phone self-destructing at a greatly accelerated rate as opposed to the expected amount of wear.
- simonh 7y ago
  >Seems more like bad software exposing lightly defective hardware. These are issues that could be prevented by the manufacturer on either hardware or software level in many different ways. A lot of the things the OP describes are limited or prevented on iOS devices by hardware and software restrictions, and not just review policies.
- pcr0 7y ago
  I think the parent post was implying that their former employer pulled those shenanigans on Android, but was prevented from doing the same on iOS due to restrictions, which was a source of frustration for their business execs.
- swiley 7y ago
  It's possible for userspace applications with root privileges to kill most laptops running Linux in a similar way.
  - chmod775 7y ago
    You don't expect an application running with root privileges on Linux to be sandboxed, quite the opposite in fact. You can brick your hardware in a million ways with root privileges by doing fun stuff like overwriting firmware/efi settings etc. It's not comparable at all to an application on your phone downloaded from an app store, which you expect to be highly sandboxed and which you certainly not expect to be able to do irreversible damage to your hardware.
oblio 7y ago
On the other hand, desktops don't seem to explode, even though there's countless types of applications shoved onto them. There are other ways to handle this: lawsuits (worst case scenario), PR disasters via media and customer backlash, etc.
- ABCLAW 7y ago
  If desktops had batteries the size of their PSUs, I guarantee I'd have blown one up by now. Probably more than one. Heck, I made a set of peripheral speakers explode once.
writepub 7y ago
Apple needn't be the customer's savior - just look at platforms outside iOS, they exist and thrive without an install-overlord "looking out" for users. The biggest lie Apple has convinced the world of, is that Apple is required to play Hall monitor for user's protection, but the truth is that they lock their hardware up for greed - "you not only pay to buy hardware, but to run software on hardware you legally own"

nathan_long 7y ago

That's great. But that sounds like failing to meet what could be an objective quality standard, enforced by something like CI. I don't think anyone objects to that kind of gate keeping. The contention here (true or false) is that Apple tips the scales so that good apps lose to Apple's competing ones.

mises 7y ago
On what is Apple competing with respect to apps? I know they've got a few, like garage band, but they make money regardless of which app is purchased.
- salamander014 7y ago
  Their Music app versus Spotify, their Photos app versus Google Photos, their News app versus NPR... And that's not everything.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Is there any app that they make big money off of that they're competing on? serious question. Not being argumentative. Trying to get a picture of how much of Apple's hundreds of billions these apps are.
    - esc861 7y ago
      Apple Music. Their services are making up a growing percentage of their revenue: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/01/30/apple-music-50-million-subscribers/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/01/30/apple-music-50-m...
      - bilbo0s 7y ago
        Is there one that is bigger than that? Because several sources are claiming that Apple Music represents less than 1% of Apple's value or whatever. I guess what I'm wondering is if there is an app that would induce a company to cheat to try to juice it? Something like MS cheating with DOS and Windows to try to juice Excel vs Lotus?

chmod775 7y ago

> Within months of use, customer phones would either “explode” from excessive battery drain, “lightly smoke,” or just become inoperable from dead flash storage. Seems more like bad software exposing lightly defective hardware. These are issues that could be prevented by the manufacturer on either hardware or software level in many different ways. If you have to trust userspace applications to not trash your hardware, you (Apple) are doing something wrong. They're not even hard problems. You can prevent any of these with a post-release over-the-air update. There would be a cost to your benchmarking scores, obviously. But what good is top-tier performance when you can observe your phone self-destructing at a greatly accelerated rate as opposed to the expected amount of wear.

simonh 7y ago
>Seems more like bad software exposing lightly defective hardware. These are issues that could be prevented by the manufacturer on either hardware or software level in many different ways. A lot of the things the OP describes are limited or prevented on iOS devices by hardware and software restrictions, and not just review policies.
pcr0 7y ago
I think the parent post was implying that their former employer pulled those shenanigans on Android, but was prevented from doing the same on iOS due to restrictions, which was a source of frustration for their business execs.
swiley 7y ago
It's possible for userspace applications with root privileges to kill most laptops running Linux in a similar way.
- chmod775 7y ago
  You don't expect an application running with root privileges on Linux to be sandboxed, quite the opposite in fact. You can brick your hardware in a million ways with root privileges by doing fun stuff like overwriting firmware/efi settings etc. It's not comparable at all to an application on your phone downloaded from an app store, which you expect to be highly sandboxed and which you certainly not expect to be able to do irreversible damage to your hardware.

oblio 7y ago

On the other hand, desktops don't seem to explode, even though there's countless types of applications shoved onto them. There are other ways to handle this: lawsuits (worst case scenario), PR disasters via media and customer backlash, etc.

ABCLAW 7y ago
If desktops had batteries the size of their PSUs, I guarantee I'd have blown one up by now. Probably more than one. Heck, I made a set of peripheral speakers explode once.

writepub 7y ago

Apple needn't be the customer's savior - just look at platforms outside iOS, they exist and thrive without an install-overlord "looking out" for users. The biggest lie Apple has convinced the world of, is that Apple is required to play Hall monitor for user's protection, but the truth is that they lock their hardware up for greed - "you not only pay to buy hardware, but to run software on hardware you legally own"