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If I see an app in the App Store that I might be interested in trying then I can download it and be pretty sure it's not malware, it does roughly what it's adve

by mcintyre1994 6y ago

If I see an app in the App Store that I might be interested in trying then I can download it and be pretty sure it's not malware, it does roughly what it's advertised as doing, and I can see from its price and the IAPs listed in the store whether it's reasonable value. By contrast every time my mum clicks a Facebook advert and downloads an app on her Android phone it makes her phone noticeably worse to use. Apple is seemingly the only company able to maintain a reasonable certainty that an app they're hosting/advertising isn't deliberately malicious. If Apple allow sideloading then I genuinely expect millions of people will have malware on their phones within days of Facebook being able to replicate their malicious Android app advertising business on iOS.

cma 6y ago
If it is such a valuable service maybe Apple could let you pay $50 to lock your mom's phone after purchase, or whatever dollar value people value the lockdown at.
bob1029 6y ago
I am still not seeing the argument relative to mine. If the ability to side load an app is not enabled by default, how would novice users accidentally install apps they may not have intended to?
- darkwizard42 6y ago
  Step 1: User clicks ad that says they can download this app super easily and improve their phone's battery performance. Step 2: User clicks and navigates to a side-load page/alternate store. Step 2a: Pop-up appears - please adjust your settings to enable access to this app Step 3: User does so and now downloads malware. Step 4: Gets upset and blames Apple or calls up their more tech informed Hacker-News-using family member and asks how to fix it. (this genuinely happens with my mother and chrome extensions - she somehow CANNOT avoid those "search engine takeover" extensions no matter how much I try to educate her on how to avoid it)
  - rsanek 6y ago
    What if the permission enablement was made more difficult? Perhaps like how you get to access Android developer tools only after tapping the build number a bunch of times. Or even, making it something you have to run from a CLI while connected to a computer. My point is, there are many options that preserve safety for the vast majority of users without making it a total non-starter to use alternative app stores.
    - sirn 6y ago
      Few years ago before Apple implemeted Night Shift, F.lux used to use an ability for non-paid developer accounts to compile and run an app on their phone to distribute. They provided a source code for a small program that serve as a shim to F.lux. User need to compile this code with Xcode and put it on their phone. People followed tutorial videos downloading Xcode, making a developer account, figure out how to get signing profile works, etc. just to get F.lux installed on their phone. Searching for "Flux iOS 9" on YouTube yields some video with over 100k views. In some community there are people who are willing to do it for you (by VNC into user's machine) at $10 per installation.

cma 6y ago

If it is such a valuable service maybe Apple could let you pay $50 to lock your mom's phone after purchase, or whatever dollar value people value the lockdown at.

bob1029 6y ago

I am still not seeing the argument relative to mine. If the ability to side load an app is not enabled by default, how would novice users accidentally install apps they may not have intended to?

darkwizard42 6y ago
Step 1: User clicks ad that says they can download this app super easily and improve their phone's battery performance. Step 2: User clicks and navigates to a side-load page/alternate store. Step 2a: Pop-up appears - please adjust your settings to enable access to this app Step 3: User does so and now downloads malware. Step 4: Gets upset and blames Apple or calls up their more tech informed Hacker-News-using family member and asks how to fix it. (this genuinely happens with my mother and chrome extensions - she somehow CANNOT avoid those "search engine takeover" extensions no matter how much I try to educate her on how to avoid it)
- rsanek 6y ago
  What if the permission enablement was made more difficult? Perhaps like how you get to access Android developer tools only after tapping the build number a bunch of times. Or even, making it something you have to run from a CLI while connected to a computer. My point is, there are many options that preserve safety for the vast majority of users without making it a total non-starter to use alternative app stores.
  - sirn 6y ago
    Few years ago before Apple implemeted Night Shift, F.lux used to use an ability for non-paid developer accounts to compile and run an app on their phone to distribute. They provided a source code for a small program that serve as a shim to F.lux. User need to compile this code with Xcode and put it on their phone. People followed tutorial videos downloading Xcode, making a developer account, figure out how to get signing profile works, etc. just to get F.lux installed on their phone. Searching for "Flux iOS 9" on YouTube yields some video with over 100k views. In some community there are people who are willing to do it for you (by VNC into user's machine) at $10 per installation.