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Apples walled garden approach is not necessary for any of this though (nor does it even make it easier). You can introduce sandboxing, fine grained permissions

Apples walled garden approach is not necessary for any of this though (nor does it even make it easier). You can introduce sandboxing, fine grained permissions etc without locking devs and consumers into a controlled app store - these are OS features, not app store features.

HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
Ah yes permissions: "-This clock app needs to access your photos, contacts, all the hardware the phone has and all your cloud accounts -No -The app can not function without the required permissions."
- kabacha 6y ago
  Yes and the app gets uninstalled and review bombed on google's play store. Seems like a successful democratic process to me.
  - la_oveja 6y ago
    >App steals data from millions >Gets catched years later and review bombed >Author walks away with pockets full and probably onto the next money-grabbing project Oh yes, classic "successful democratic process"
    - kabacha 6y ago
      That's a bit of a stretch. On play store permission bombing is so prevalent and no one is installing any apps with less than 4 stars so I doubt the "malware" makes enough money to sustain this.
  - HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
    Time to make a new clock/flashlight/garbage game app I guess!!!
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Fine-grained permissions aren’t useful if an application is going to request access to everything anyway - and non-technical or non-privacy-conscious users will click-through any and all permission prompts so [they can see the dancing bunnies](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-dancing-bunnies-problem/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-dancing-bunnies-problem/). In the case of very popular, aggressively-marketed, apps like TikTok and Facebook’s: the lack of easy side-loading or alternative app-stores (with looser auditing) means they’re forced to comply with Apple’s regs against unnecessary permission prompts, and this means they simply can’t take advantage of users’ ignorance (or overriding desire to see the dancing bunnies) to get them to grant unnecessary permissions.
- p1necone 6y ago
  At least in Android (not familiar with iOS) you can deny apps access to any and all permissions, the features just won't work. I.e. if you deny Snapchat access to the camera you can still browse the app, read messages etc - you just won't be able to take any photos.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    That’s not my point: I’m arguing that apps like TikTok and Facebook are big enough that they could convince non-technical users (who are either ignorant-of, or just don’t care about, app permissions and privacy) to switch to an unofficial app-store where they could list their app without it being denied approval by Apple or Google for unreasonable app permission prompts. ...but the fact that unofficial app-stores for unjailbroken iOS devices do not exist makes this impossible for now. It’s very easy to imagine a TV ad or movie trailer ad for a TikTok or Facebook app with the cheerfully-voiced narrator saying “Just visit the TikTok Android App Store” or “Just open the Facebook iOS App Store” - then when the app is installed and first-opened the app would use a single “grant everything” permission prompt - or if the OS doesn’t allow that it could bombard the user with many prompts all-at-once and if the user denies any of them then a curtly-worded new messagebox would say “you must grant these permissions to use our app” otherwise the app quits. There’s not much Apple or Google could do to stop this that those app developers couldn’t work-around. Apple’s iOS App Store rejections for privacy reasons is a human solution to a non-technical problem, as it’s well-established that technical solutions to non-technical problems are ineffectual. It can be argued this is possible on Android - which does allow for other app-stores - and I did wonder why this isn’t already happening with Android users - then I realised that probably most Android users have those horrible carrier and OEM locked-down devices that make it harder (if not impossible) to change system settings or add other app-stores.
scottoreily 6y ago
And yet no one else has
- p1necone 6y ago
  Android has. (Also I assume a pile of other, no longer available/not very successful mobile OSes, but the ecosystem is just Apple and Android at the moment).
  - squeaky-clean 6y ago
    Android has far too many apps that refuse to work unless you give certain permissions. One of my banking apps needs the camera permission to work at all. The permission prompt states it's to digitally cash checks, but it asks at startup and if you deny permission the app quits immediately. Most delivery apps won't work without giving GPS permission. The iOS app store does not allow this kinda bs.
- Seirdy 6y ago
  Flatpak has done this better than iOS has. - Completely FOSS stack - Uses multiple repositories (no lock-in) - Everything is sandboxed with Bubblewrap - Fine-grained permission control that offers more than iOS: control whether apps can access the network, which directories an app can access, if it can print, and even whether or not it can access PulseAudio. - Cross-platform: runtimes are OCI container images and can be targeted on any distro that supports Flatpak (which is almost all of them). It's gained adoption from a number of recognizable FOSS and proprietary names: Zoom, Spotify, Steam, Firefox, VLC, Discord, Libreoffice, Skype, Inkscape, both Minecraft and Minetest, Microsoft Teams, Krita, IntelliJ IDEs (both Community and Professional), and Blender are available as Flatpaks through Flathub. GNOME and KDE release almost all their apps as Flatpaks through the `gnome` and `kdeapps` Flatpak repos, and copy them over to Flathub when they're confident that Flatpak-ing didn't introduce any bugs.
  - scottoreily 6y ago
    Pretty cool. But it will never have the momentum android and iOS have
unethical_ban 6y ago
In this respect, I see your point - a properly designed and secure OS, with a user and installer in "non admin" mode, should be able to do these things without locking the source of an app down to one location.
pjmlp 6y ago
Yes it is, because devs aren't going to respect it. Even Android is going into this direction, locking down APIs, access to Linux syscalls (not even considered part of NDK official APIs), background execution modes and file access.

HeadsUpHigh 6y ago

Ah yes permissions: "-This clock app needs to access your photos, contacts, all the hardware the phone has and all your cloud accounts -No -The app can not function without the required permissions."

kabacha 6y ago
Yes and the app gets uninstalled and review bombed on google's play store. Seems like a successful democratic process to me.
- la_oveja 6y ago
  >App steals data from millions >Gets catched years later and review bombed >Author walks away with pockets full and probably onto the next money-grabbing project Oh yes, classic "successful democratic process"
  - kabacha 6y ago
    That's a bit of a stretch. On play store permission bombing is so prevalent and no one is installing any apps with less than 4 stars so I doubt the "malware" makes enough money to sustain this.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  Time to make a new clock/flashlight/garbage game app I guess!!!

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

Fine-grained permissions aren’t useful if an application is going to request access to everything anyway - and non-technical or non-privacy-conscious users will click-through any and all permission prompts so [they can see the dancing bunnies](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-dancing-bunnies-problem/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-dancing-bunnies-problem/). In the case of very popular, aggressively-marketed, apps like TikTok and Facebook’s: the lack of easy side-loading or alternative app-stores (with looser auditing) means they’re forced to comply with Apple’s regs against unnecessary permission prompts, and this means they simply can’t take advantage of users’ ignorance (or overriding desire to see the dancing bunnies) to get them to grant unnecessary permissions.

p1necone 6y ago
At least in Android (not familiar with iOS) you can deny apps access to any and all permissions, the features just won't work. I.e. if you deny Snapchat access to the camera you can still browse the app, read messages etc - you just won't be able to take any photos.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  That’s not my point: I’m arguing that apps like TikTok and Facebook are big enough that they could convince non-technical users (who are either ignorant-of, or just don’t care about, app permissions and privacy) to switch to an unofficial app-store where they could list their app without it being denied approval by Apple or Google for unreasonable app permission prompts. ...but the fact that unofficial app-stores for unjailbroken iOS devices do not exist makes this impossible for now. It’s very easy to imagine a TV ad or movie trailer ad for a TikTok or Facebook app with the cheerfully-voiced narrator saying “Just visit the TikTok Android App Store” or “Just open the Facebook iOS App Store” - then when the app is installed and first-opened the app would use a single “grant everything” permission prompt - or if the OS doesn’t allow that it could bombard the user with many prompts all-at-once and if the user denies any of them then a curtly-worded new messagebox would say “you must grant these permissions to use our app” otherwise the app quits. There’s not much Apple or Google could do to stop this that those app developers couldn’t work-around. Apple’s iOS App Store rejections for privacy reasons is a human solution to a non-technical problem, as it’s well-established that technical solutions to non-technical problems are ineffectual. It can be argued this is possible on Android - which does allow for other app-stores - and I did wonder why this isn’t already happening with Android users - then I realised that probably most Android users have those horrible carrier and OEM locked-down devices that make it harder (if not impossible) to change system settings or add other app-stores.

scottoreily 6y ago

And yet no one else has

p1necone 6y ago
Android has. (Also I assume a pile of other, no longer available/not very successful mobile OSes, but the ecosystem is just Apple and Android at the moment).
- squeaky-clean 6y ago
  Android has far too many apps that refuse to work unless you give certain permissions. One of my banking apps needs the camera permission to work at all. The permission prompt states it's to digitally cash checks, but it asks at startup and if you deny permission the app quits immediately. Most delivery apps won't work without giving GPS permission. The iOS app store does not allow this kinda bs.
Seirdy 6y ago
Flatpak has done this better than iOS has. - Completely FOSS stack - Uses multiple repositories (no lock-in) - Everything is sandboxed with Bubblewrap - Fine-grained permission control that offers more than iOS: control whether apps can access the network, which directories an app can access, if it can print, and even whether or not it can access PulseAudio. - Cross-platform: runtimes are OCI container images and can be targeted on any distro that supports Flatpak (which is almost all of them). It's gained adoption from a number of recognizable FOSS and proprietary names: Zoom, Spotify, Steam, Firefox, VLC, Discord, Libreoffice, Skype, Inkscape, both Minecraft and Minetest, Microsoft Teams, Krita, IntelliJ IDEs (both Community and Professional), and Blender are available as Flatpaks through Flathub. GNOME and KDE release almost all their apps as Flatpaks through the `gnome` and `kdeapps` Flatpak repos, and copy them over to Flathub when they're confident that Flatpak-ing didn't introduce any bugs.
- scottoreily 6y ago
  Pretty cool. But it will never have the momentum android and iOS have

unethical_ban 6y ago

In this respect, I see your point - a properly designed and secure OS, with a user and installer in "non admin" mode, should be able to do these things without locking the source of an app down to one location.

pjmlp 6y ago

Yes it is, because devs aren't going to respect it. Even Android is going into this direction, locking down APIs, access to Linux syscalls (not even considered part of NDK official APIs), background execution modes and file access.