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The reason why developers want to make apps for iOS is because there's a large market. That market exists because Apple has done a great job prioritizing the pr

The reason why developers want to make apps for iOS is because there's a large market. That market exists because Apple has done a great job prioritizing the protection of their customers' privacy and payment information. If third party App Stores are ever forced onto iOS devices, that market vanishes completely. Crashes, slowdowns, battery drain, malware, and information theft will become the norm. Go no further than your gaming PC to witness the nightmare that is multiple app stores all competing for CPU and control/surveillance of your system, all needing to bring their own flavors of information-harvesting/exposing DRM. This new round of digital YIMBYism is profoundly anti-consumer and stands to destroy the trust that Apple has built with its customers. I sincerely hope that those of us who have trusted Apple with our data will start to speak out before Google-backed lobbyists tranform iOS into a malware-ridden hellscape.

vkou 6y ago
> The reason why developers want to make apps for iOS is because there's a large market. That market exists because Apple has done a great job prioritizing the protection of their customers' privacy and payment information. You vastly overestimate the number of figs the average user gives about most of the privacy problems that HN grapples with. The average user, after all, uses Facebook. What the average user wants is for shit to just work. The reason that iOS is a huge market has less to do with that, and more to do with all the other aspects of what makes a good phone. You argument is also somewhat undermined by the existence of... A rather large amount of crap on the App Store. Somehow, the iPhone has managed to survive. ... Also, cutting side-deals with apps created by billion-dollar players, and telling all other app developers to pound sand (Regardless of the quality of the apps in question) is the main problem we're talking about. Whether or not Apple does this has no bearing on the current quality of the iPhone (But has a lot of bearing on their bottom line), but has a large bearing on the future quality of the iPhone (A vibrant app ecosystem is healthier then one where a few hand-picked winners are rewarded, and their competitors can never compete on an even playing field. At least, that's what advocates of open markets tell me.)
- rmrfrmrf 6y ago
  Breach a user's trust and/or misuse their data and you'll know about it pretty quickly. I'd wager that the average user cares much more about protecting, say, their browsing history, than they care about petty B2B contract drama.
  - vkou 6y ago
    > Breach a user's trust and/or misuse their data and you'll know about it pretty quickly. > I'd wager that the average user cares much more about protecting, say, their browsing history, No, you won't, for a lot of reasons. 1. If people gave a fig about their browsing history, they wouldn't have Facebook accounts. (Which, combined with tracking cookies, do a great job of leaking their browsing history.) 2. If people gave a fig about their browsing history, they wouldn't use browsers with omnibars. 3. Or browsers which sync their accounts across multiple computers/devices. 3. People don't even understand which part of the tech stack (The OS, the app, the browser, the website, the third-party cookies served by the website) that they use actually compromises their information. 4. Unless you're a political dissident being hunted by the CIA, the House of Saud, and the Mossad, when this information is compromised, the harm is difficult to quantify, and is never directly linked to the part of the stack that caused the compromise. Ask five different people 'Who knows your browsing history?', and you will get five different answers, all of which will be wrong. If normal people cared about this in the particular, they'd be tech-literate about this sort of thing. They aren't. As long as some asshole is not using that compromised browsing history to harass them personally, as long as it's being used in the abstract, by some information broker to show them ads, most of them don't give a damn. I know that they don't, because they don't take any steps to secure it. Obviously, the users don't care about the B2B spat between Apple and developers. I'm not asking them to - I'm pointing out that rigged markets rarely produce good products.
    - rmrfrmrf 6y ago
      This is a good example of the contradictions in free market dogma. The reality is that the Facebook as it exists in the "rigged market" of the App Store violates users' privacy less than the "free market" versions on other platforms. Apple's restrictive policies have made them the only company to (have the power to) put checks on Facebook's information harvesting.
evrydayhustling 6y ago
If consumer trust were the foundation of Apple's growth, they wouldn't have to worry about folks defecting to another app store if it was available. The reality is that, having created a great market, they are now extracting rents by using their ability to exclude apps to enforce things that don't benefit users but expand their margins (like forcing use of their identity and payment systems).
thothamon 6y ago
I don't see that at all. The value Apple supposedly provides is safety. If consumers want the safety that Apple offers, they can continue to limit themselves to Apple's App Store offerings, while those who don't value safety as highly can use a different app store. Just because you value something in a certain way does not mean everyone else should be forced to adhere to those same values.
- eropple 6y ago
  When you allow additional app stores, you encourage companies--like, say, Epic Games--to convince people who do not understand the ramifications or the threats involved with opening up past a rigorous review process to do so. And Epic isn't going to be following behind for the newly-credulous when they pick up another one and it's full of dangerous shitware. Somebody who wants to not use the App Store can buy an Android device. It's fine. It's fine.
  - fouric 6y ago
    This is a really easy problem to solve - add a scary sign and/or void the warranty when a user decides they want to use an alternative app store. Then they at least have the option - and if they take it and suffer, they're the only one to blame. There's absolutely no collateral damage among users, and this feature would not meaningfully weaken security (if implemented properly) - "the user could do something dumb that only affects them" is not reduced security.
    - eropple 6y ago
      "This user just gave a third party their entire contact list" certainly does harm other people. "This user just had their entire camera roll exfiltrated" certainly does harm other people. These are social devices. Their users are, by and large, non-technical and incurious. Expecting them to not just click past the "scary sign", and so condition to do it again and again, so they can play Fortnite is a level of lack of understanding that borders on incredible.
      - 6y ago
ivalm 6y ago
> I sincerely hope that those of us who have trusted Apple with our data will start to speak out before Google-backed lobbyists tranform iOS into a malware-ridden hellscape Ive had iPhone for the past year, but before that I had many years of Android. I really don’t see my years on Android as hellscape. I never had any malware, I mostly used google play store but also sideloaded some “grey” software (a mobile hearthstone client before the game had a real mobile client). I think at some point I installed amazon App Store but not sure why. I also can’t say that my recent Apple experience is smoother than my android experience. On my iPhone 11 Pro I’ve had multiple experiences where some app after a while started to crash on startup and clearing data didn’t help. They had to be explicitly removed then reinstalled. My previous phones (Samsung S8 was my last Android) didnt have this or really any issue.
- sanchay 6y ago
  Maybe because Amazon App store used to cough up one paid app for free / day to get users to use their store.
- nodamage 6y ago
  > I never had any malware I think you need to be careful about taking your experience as a sophisticated user that understands how to avoid malware and extrapolating that experience to the general population. There's a reason fake Fortnite APK links have been plastered all over the internet and are successfully tricking less knowledgeable users into installing things they did not intend.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    This argument doesn't hold water because it applies as much to the choice of phone as the choice of app store. There have been phones that come with malware preinstalled: https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-pre-installed-malware-has-been-found-in-budget-us-smartphones/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-pre-installed-malware-has... A user who acts without knowledge or advice buys that phone and is infected. A user who acts without knowledge or advice buys an app from a store operated by the people who made that phone and is infected. It's the same scenario. So how do you justify forcing the people who do know what they're doing to choose which app store they want to use based on which phone they want to buy, instead of allowing them to choose independently? > There's a reason fake Fortnite APK links have been plastered all over the internet and are successfully tricking less knowledgeable users into installing things they did not intend. There is a reason, but it's not the one you're implying. The problem with having a single dominant app store is that it has given people no experience in how to be safe in installing apps from other sources, so then when an app they really want gets kicked out of the dominant store, they mash whatever buttons they think will get it back. Whereas if there were multiple major trustworthy stores, the users of an app whose developer is having a dispute with one the stores could safely and easily switch to another well-known store. Meanwhile the users with iPhones can't mash buttons to get somewhere stupid, but they also can't do anything to install Fortnite on their phone right now, which is still worse for them than having it available in a trustworthy store other than Apple's -- which would keep them from getting the point of wanting to mash buttons.
fouric 6y ago
> If third party App Stores are ever forced onto iOS devices, that market vanishes completely. Crashes, slowdowns, battery drain, malware, and information theft will become the norm. This is a wild projection. Having alternative app stores on iOS, especially if gated behind a hard-to-find switch with a scary warning sign, will be totally different than any PC experience, partially because iOS has a sandboxed architecture (and incredibly solid engineering in general) that is far more secure than Windows, and partially because Windows allows you to install stuff incredibly easily with no signing or app store required. It's really obvious that iOS will have a fraction of the security issues that Windows has had over its lifetime.
- nodamage 6y ago
  I mean, is it really that far out there if you look at the past two decades of history of malware on Windows and particularly Android? Sandboxing has not prevented the proliferation of malware on Android, why would it be any different on iOS? Sandboxing also doesn't really address the other major risk which is theft of personal information by supposedly "trustworthy" apps.
  - fouric 6y ago
    Malware is less of a problem for Android now than any point in Windows' history except for possibly the past few years, so I think that sandboxing has succeeded rather well, given that Windows has had 34 years to evolve defenses and Android has only had 11. Even early on in its life, Android was still better off than Windows at the time, and what do you know - Android has allowed sideloading and alternative app stores this entire time. That is, Android is doing now what we're discussing what Apple might do, and it's worked out pretty well for them.
    - nodamage 6y ago
      That's not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Sure, the malware situation on Android is better than Windows. It's still far worse compared to iOS. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/researcher-says-nasty-android-infection-survived-a-factory-reset/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/resea... (Note the date. This is an ongoing problem.) https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-android-malware-25-million-infections https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-andr... https://securelist.com/skygofree-following-in-the-footsteps-of-hackingteam/83603/ https://securelist.com/skygofree-following-in-the-footsteps-... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/virulent-auto-rooting-malware-takes-control-of-10-million-android-devices/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/virul... Don't you think there's a direct correlation between the ability to install APKs from random shady internet sources and the spread of malware on Android? Even macOS has a worse malware situation than iOS for the exact same reason. If you believe this has "worked out well" for Android, you and I must have very different definitions of the phrase. You also didn't address my other point, which is sandboxing is only meant to address operating system level security, not developer abuse of legitimate APIs.
arvinsim 6y ago
> If third party App Stores are ever forced onto iOS devices, that market vanishes completely. Crashes, slowdowns, battery drain, malware, and information theft will become the norm. Go no further than your gaming PC to witness the nightmare that is multiple app stores all competing for CPU and control/surveillance of your system, all needing to bring their own flavors of information-harvesting/exposing DRM. I am sorry but this is just FUD. I own both a Macbook Pro and PC that I built and I have yet have these supposed "multiple app stores nightmare" that you are talking about. Do you own a Windows machine yourself? Because the above comment doesn't seem to be done in good faith.
- nodamage 6y ago
  There is literally malware spreading by masquerading as the Epic Games Store: https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-lokibot-trojan-malware-campaign-comes-disguised-as-a-popular-game-launcher/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-lokibot-trojan-malware-cam...
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    I still fail to see how this will apply to iOS. iOS doesn't magically lose it's sandboxing and become Windows just because 3d party stores are allowed.
    - nodamage 6y ago
      Sandboxing didn't prevent fake versions of Fortnite and other serious malware from spreading on Android, nor does it generally prevent information theft and privacy violation through malicious use of legitimate APIs.
bumblebritches5 6y ago
K then don't force new app stores onto the iPhone, just limit Apple's ability to ban apps they don't like, like Gab.ai, Voat, 4Chan, etc.

vkou 6y ago

> The reason why developers want to make apps for iOS is because there's a large market. That market exists because Apple has done a great job prioritizing the protection of their customers' privacy and payment information. You vastly overestimate the number of figs the average user gives about most of the privacy problems that HN grapples with. The average user, after all, uses Facebook. What the average user wants is for shit to just work. The reason that iOS is a huge market has less to do with that, and more to do with all the other aspects of what makes a good phone. You argument is also somewhat undermined by the existence of... A rather large amount of crap on the App Store. Somehow, the iPhone has managed to survive. ... Also, cutting side-deals with apps created by billion-dollar players, and telling all other app developers to pound sand (Regardless of the quality of the apps in question) is the main problem we're talking about. Whether or not Apple does this has no bearing on the current quality of the iPhone (But has a lot of bearing on their bottom line), but has a large bearing on the future quality of the iPhone (A vibrant app ecosystem is healthier then one where a few hand-picked winners are rewarded, and their competitors can never compete on an even playing field. At least, that's what advocates of open markets tell me.)

rmrfrmrf 6y ago
Breach a user's trust and/or misuse their data and you'll know about it pretty quickly. I'd wager that the average user cares much more about protecting, say, their browsing history, than they care about petty B2B contract drama.
- vkou 6y ago
  > Breach a user's trust and/or misuse their data and you'll know about it pretty quickly. > I'd wager that the average user cares much more about protecting, say, their browsing history, No, you won't, for a lot of reasons. 1. If people gave a fig about their browsing history, they wouldn't have Facebook accounts. (Which, combined with tracking cookies, do a great job of leaking their browsing history.) 2. If people gave a fig about their browsing history, they wouldn't use browsers with omnibars. 3. Or browsers which sync their accounts across multiple computers/devices. 3. People don't even understand which part of the tech stack (The OS, the app, the browser, the website, the third-party cookies served by the website) that they use actually compromises their information. 4. Unless you're a political dissident being hunted by the CIA, the House of Saud, and the Mossad, when this information is compromised, the harm is difficult to quantify, and is never directly linked to the part of the stack that caused the compromise. Ask five different people 'Who knows your browsing history?', and you will get five different answers, all of which will be wrong. If normal people cared about this in the particular, they'd be tech-literate about this sort of thing. They aren't. As long as some asshole is not using that compromised browsing history to harass them personally, as long as it's being used in the abstract, by some information broker to show them ads, most of them don't give a damn. I know that they don't, because they don't take any steps to secure it. Obviously, the users don't care about the B2B spat between Apple and developers. I'm not asking them to - I'm pointing out that rigged markets rarely produce good products.
  - rmrfrmrf 6y ago
    This is a good example of the contradictions in free market dogma. The reality is that the Facebook as it exists in the "rigged market" of the App Store violates users' privacy less than the "free market" versions on other platforms. Apple's restrictive policies have made them the only company to (have the power to) put checks on Facebook's information harvesting.

evrydayhustling 6y ago

If consumer trust were the foundation of Apple's growth, they wouldn't have to worry about folks defecting to another app store if it was available. The reality is that, having created a great market, they are now extracting rents by using their ability to exclude apps to enforce things that don't benefit users but expand their margins (like forcing use of their identity and payment systems).

thothamon 6y ago

I don't see that at all. The value Apple supposedly provides is safety. If consumers want the safety that Apple offers, they can continue to limit themselves to Apple's App Store offerings, while those who don't value safety as highly can use a different app store. Just because you value something in a certain way does not mean everyone else should be forced to adhere to those same values.

eropple 6y ago
When you allow additional app stores, you encourage companies--like, say, Epic Games--to convince people who do not understand the ramifications or the threats involved with opening up past a rigorous review process to do so. And Epic isn't going to be following behind for the newly-credulous when they pick up another one and it's full of dangerous shitware. Somebody who wants to not use the App Store can buy an Android device. It's fine. It's fine.
- fouric 6y ago
  This is a really easy problem to solve - add a scary sign and/or void the warranty when a user decides they want to use an alternative app store. Then they at least have the option - and if they take it and suffer, they're the only one to blame. There's absolutely no collateral damage among users, and this feature would not meaningfully weaken security (if implemented properly) - "the user could do something dumb that only affects them" is not reduced security.
  - eropple 6y ago
    "This user just gave a third party their entire contact list" certainly does harm other people. "This user just had their entire camera roll exfiltrated" certainly does harm other people. These are social devices. Their users are, by and large, non-technical and incurious. Expecting them to not just click past the "scary sign", and so condition to do it again and again, so they can play Fortnite is a level of lack of understanding that borders on incredible.
    - 6y ago

ivalm 6y ago

> I sincerely hope that those of us who have trusted Apple with our data will start to speak out before Google-backed lobbyists tranform iOS into a malware-ridden hellscape Ive had iPhone for the past year, but before that I had many years of Android. I really don’t see my years on Android as hellscape. I never had any malware, I mostly used google play store but also sideloaded some “grey” software (a mobile hearthstone client before the game had a real mobile client). I think at some point I installed amazon App Store but not sure why. I also can’t say that my recent Apple experience is smoother than my android experience. On my iPhone 11 Pro I’ve had multiple experiences where some app after a while started to crash on startup and clearing data didn’t help. They had to be explicitly removed then reinstalled. My previous phones (Samsung S8 was my last Android) didnt have this or really any issue.

sanchay 6y ago
Maybe because Amazon App store used to cough up one paid app for free / day to get users to use their store.
nodamage 6y ago
> I never had any malware I think you need to be careful about taking your experience as a sophisticated user that understands how to avoid malware and extrapolating that experience to the general population. There's a reason fake Fortnite APK links have been plastered all over the internet and are successfully tricking less knowledgeable users into installing things they did not intend.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  This argument doesn't hold water because it applies as much to the choice of phone as the choice of app store. There have been phones that come with malware preinstalled: https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-pre-installed-malware-has-been-found-in-budget-us-smartphones/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-pre-installed-malware-has... A user who acts without knowledge or advice buys that phone and is infected. A user who acts without knowledge or advice buys an app from a store operated by the people who made that phone and is infected. It's the same scenario. So how do you justify forcing the people who do know what they're doing to choose which app store they want to use based on which phone they want to buy, instead of allowing them to choose independently? > There's a reason fake Fortnite APK links have been plastered all over the internet and are successfully tricking less knowledgeable users into installing things they did not intend. There is a reason, but it's not the one you're implying. The problem with having a single dominant app store is that it has given people no experience in how to be safe in installing apps from other sources, so then when an app they really want gets kicked out of the dominant store, they mash whatever buttons they think will get it back. Whereas if there were multiple major trustworthy stores, the users of an app whose developer is having a dispute with one the stores could safely and easily switch to another well-known store. Meanwhile the users with iPhones can't mash buttons to get somewhere stupid, but they also can't do anything to install Fortnite on their phone right now, which is still worse for them than having it available in a trustworthy store other than Apple's -- which would keep them from getting the point of wanting to mash buttons.

fouric 6y ago

> If third party App Stores are ever forced onto iOS devices, that market vanishes completely. Crashes, slowdowns, battery drain, malware, and information theft will become the norm. This is a wild projection. Having alternative app stores on iOS, especially if gated behind a hard-to-find switch with a scary warning sign, will be totally different than any PC experience, partially because iOS has a sandboxed architecture (and incredibly solid engineering in general) that is far more secure than Windows, and partially because Windows allows you to install stuff incredibly easily with no signing or app store required. It's really obvious that iOS will have a fraction of the security issues that Windows has had over its lifetime.

nodamage 6y ago
I mean, is it really that far out there if you look at the past two decades of history of malware on Windows and particularly Android? Sandboxing has not prevented the proliferation of malware on Android, why would it be any different on iOS? Sandboxing also doesn't really address the other major risk which is theft of personal information by supposedly "trustworthy" apps.
- fouric 6y ago
  Malware is less of a problem for Android now than any point in Windows' history except for possibly the past few years, so I think that sandboxing has succeeded rather well, given that Windows has had 34 years to evolve defenses and Android has only had 11. Even early on in its life, Android was still better off than Windows at the time, and what do you know - Android has allowed sideloading and alternative app stores this entire time. That is, Android is doing now what we're discussing what Apple might do, and it's worked out pretty well for them.
  - nodamage 6y ago
    That's not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Sure, the malware situation on Android is better than Windows. It's still far worse compared to iOS. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/researcher-says-nasty-android-infection-survived-a-factory-reset/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/resea... (Note the date. This is an ongoing problem.) https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-android-malware-25-million-infections https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-andr... https://securelist.com/skygofree-following-in-the-footsteps-of-hackingteam/83603/ https://securelist.com/skygofree-following-in-the-footsteps-... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/virulent-auto-rooting-malware-takes-control-of-10-million-android-devices/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/virul... Don't you think there's a direct correlation between the ability to install APKs from random shady internet sources and the spread of malware on Android? Even macOS has a worse malware situation than iOS for the exact same reason. If you believe this has "worked out well" for Android, you and I must have very different definitions of the phrase. You also didn't address my other point, which is sandboxing is only meant to address operating system level security, not developer abuse of legitimate APIs.

arvinsim 6y ago

> If third party App Stores are ever forced onto iOS devices, that market vanishes completely. Crashes, slowdowns, battery drain, malware, and information theft will become the norm. Go no further than your gaming PC to witness the nightmare that is multiple app stores all competing for CPU and control/surveillance of your system, all needing to bring their own flavors of information-harvesting/exposing DRM. I am sorry but this is just FUD. I own both a Macbook Pro and PC that I built and I have yet have these supposed "multiple app stores nightmare" that you are talking about. Do you own a Windows machine yourself? Because the above comment doesn't seem to be done in good faith.

nodamage 6y ago
There is literally malware spreading by masquerading as the Epic Games Store: https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-lokibot-trojan-malware-campaign-comes-disguised-as-a-popular-game-launcher/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-lokibot-trojan-malware-cam...
- arvinsim 6y ago
  I still fail to see how this will apply to iOS. iOS doesn't magically lose it's sandboxing and become Windows just because 3d party stores are allowed.
  - nodamage 6y ago
    Sandboxing didn't prevent fake versions of Fortnite and other serious malware from spreading on Android, nor does it generally prevent information theft and privacy violation through malicious use of legitimate APIs.

bumblebritches5 6y ago

K then don't force new app stores onto the iPhone, just limit Apple's ability to ban apps they don't like, like Gab.ai, Voat, 4Chan, etc.