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When Apple added Screen Time, they banned other competing apps.
by dannyw 6y ago
When Apple added Screen Time, they banned other competing apps.
- the_other 6y agoI see how that does affect the competition. Fair point.
- danaris 6y agoIf I recall correctly, the apps they banned were doing things like abusing the VPN function to capture all traffic from the phone, and using that as their mechanism for blocking certain websites (or maybe it was MDM they were abusing...?). It wasn't a simple matter of "Apple releases product that does X, then bans all products that do X from the App Store;" the products they banned had to use some seriously sketchy tactics to monitor and restrict other apps on the iPhone without system-level access.
- coder543 6y agoAnd, instead of providing APIs to help make those apps less sketchy... Apple decided it would be easier to just ban them. Apple clearly thought they were valuable enough to customers to keep around before the release of Screen Time, even with the sketchy method they had to use.
- user-the-name 6y agoBecause those APIs can be used for extremely sketchy activity.
- coder543 6y agoMany APIs can be used for sketchy things. Supposedly, that’s one thing the App Store review process is meant to catch.
- user-the-name 6y agoYou can't detect everything in review. iOS has always been designed as not to offer APIs that can be used for particularly harmful purposes.
- coder543 6y agoI agree completely. I'm still not a fan of Apple sherlocking popular apps and then proceeding to ban those apps that carved out the market for them... that's a very anticompetitive move.
- dannyw 6y agoBut it’s not possible to replicate Screen Time without using VPNs.