6 ms·

> bleed into other industries And what would be so bad about this exactly? The comparison is oft made with closed stores for gaming consoles; but I don't see w

> bleed into other industries And what would be so bad about this exactly? The comparison is oft made with closed stores for gaming consoles; but I don't see why regulating console manufacturers to require side-loading or third-party stores would be such a bad thing. There's no law of the universe which dictates that their business model be per-unit loss-leaders for game revenue splits.

judge2020 6y ago
In my opinion, it's an issue with the way it's being portrayed - not mentioning consoles, smart TVs, etc. can lead a reader to think that Apple is alone in these practices, when mentioning the other devices might provide more perspective.
- callalex 6y ago
  When you are at the top of so many wealth lists you are subject to intense criticism that may not be directly attributed to you, but you are still taking advantage of. This is a good feature of the system.
GloriousKoji 6y ago
While some good and unique homebrew stuff certainly exists, I'm willing to bet the VAST majority of side loading and 3rd party stores on consoles would overwhelmingly be used for piracy if available.
- lukifer 6y ago
  It's merely an accident of history that we have general-purpose computing at all [0], let alone anything like FOSS. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a universe where all consumer computers were locked-down appliances, and general computing was limited to a small number of credentialed researchers and professionals. In such a universe, similar claims would be made about the only purpose for general computing being piracy, crime, etc. At any rate, while I'd prefer fully open devices, it's also a false choice: strategies like Apple's code signing on MacOS could allow for authenticating binaries for the purposes of detecting piracy/malware, without requiring a monopoly on distribution. [0] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
  - chii 6y ago
    > merely an accident of history that we have general-purpose computing at all [0] and a good accident. But because it's such a good outcome for society, the society in question _should_ look to create more of this. Like how democracy is a mere accident, but it's a good outcome, and society should work to replicate it and improve it. If parties under the current system don't stand to benefit, but the over all benefit is greater, then it's a good choice. Apple isn't entitled to own their walled garden - it's not a right. It's their privilege they built, but society can tear it down by decree if tearing it down leads to better outcome for society.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    As someone that enjoyed the gardens of 8 and 16 bit computing, the accident was interesting, but I still would rather that Amiga and Atari gardens would have won over the PC.
- danShumway 6y ago
  When you put a barrier of entry on top of an activity, you will usually find that a large portion of the people who still take part in that activity are doing so because they have strong, even illegal reasons to take part in it. If you outlawed general-purpose computing, a large majority of the people who still wrote code afterwards would be black-hat hackers. If you outlawed car repair, the majority of the people who took apart their cars anyway would be installing illegal, unsafe mods. If you were able to successfully outlaw encryption, such that there were genuine barriers to encrypting a message, then the majority of people who used encryption under the table would be people who were communicating about breaking the law. The only people who are willing to jump through the significant hoops required to sideload on consoles are people who are either strongly motivated to write their own code and fix their own problems (ie, the almost ideological, morally driven homebrew community) and pirates. But part of the reason that's the case is because more legitimate actors can't enter the space. There is no modding scene on consoles. There are no 7th graders making Xbox games using kits that they can distribute to their friends. There are no widely popular homebrew kits that almost everyone accepts as improvements over the default experience. There is no competition between distribution channels. There are no custom stores with specialized filters and moderation for niche content. There are a lot of reasons why we might want to have dedicated, single-purpose hardware that can still be modified by normal people, but calls to say, "show me the community for this, and then I will allow the community to exist" are just backwards. I can't show that the majority of people hacking consoles are just writing mods for Zelda games and releasing custom 3DS themes, because the majority of people are not allowed to do that. It's not surprising that the people who buy specialized vulnerable games or modchips to reflash their expensive hardware at the risk of being permanently banned by the companies who make that hardware -- that the majority of those people are already used to breaking rules, and that many of them then look at piracy and say, "eh, I've already gone this far, what on earth do I have to lose?" Of course pirates are common among sideloaders, you can have your accounts banned and your legal games taken away if you make a mistake. Who the heck other than most dedicated people are going to take that risk? What is surprising is that there's any homebrew community on these consoles at all -- that even with all of the stupid risks involved, that people are still willing to follow the law and engage with hacked hardware in a legal way that fosters a creative ecosystem of mods and custom software.
kevingadd 6y ago
The XBox has been allowing sideloading for a while now (XBox One and now Series X) and it hasn't caused any problems. XBox Live Indie Games for 360 was also not an issue. Sony had sideloading for homebrew on PlayStation at various points in time too. I think making it a required policy (with allowed constraints) would not be harmful to consoles at all. Requiring third party stores is more difficult, but honestly I don't think most people would need them if you can just sideload.
- Zelizz 6y ago
  Don't you have to boot into developer mode on Xbox to run sideloaded apps? AFAIK you also can't access any store titles when in dev mode either. And UWP apps don't get access to the full power of the console, they run under the system OS.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    Every game on a modern console runs under the system OS, there's a hypervisor and dedicated CPU/RAM resources, etc. You can run actual games in that environment and the performance allocation is documented. Certainly for professional-grade stuff you don't want to be in that environment but it definitely works. You're right about the dev mode toggle, which is unfortunate. I'd like to see barriers like that go away, and it wouldn't be appropriate on productivity hardware. I don't have any expert inside information on this but I suspect it's an absolute requirement from game studios that don't want side-loaded apps being used to cheat or exfiltrate content - I think that shouldn't require a hard reboot of the console but maybe it's similar to the situation Riot has arrived at with Valorant where they demand full kernel-level control over your system from boot to determine whether you are trying to cheat at their games or not.

judge2020 6y ago

In my opinion, it's an issue with the way it's being portrayed - not mentioning consoles, smart TVs, etc. can lead a reader to think that Apple is alone in these practices, when mentioning the other devices might provide more perspective.

callalex 6y ago
When you are at the top of so many wealth lists you are subject to intense criticism that may not be directly attributed to you, but you are still taking advantage of. This is a good feature of the system.

GloriousKoji 6y ago

While some good and unique homebrew stuff certainly exists, I'm willing to bet the VAST majority of side loading and 3rd party stores on consoles would overwhelmingly be used for piracy if available.

lukifer 6y ago
It's merely an accident of history that we have general-purpose computing at all [0], let alone anything like FOSS. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a universe where all consumer computers were locked-down appliances, and general computing was limited to a small number of credentialed researchers and professionals. In such a universe, similar claims would be made about the only purpose for general computing being piracy, crime, etc. At any rate, while I'd prefer fully open devices, it's also a false choice: strategies like Apple's code signing on MacOS could allow for authenticating binaries for the purposes of detecting piracy/malware, without requiring a monopoly on distribution. [0] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
- chii 6y ago
  > merely an accident of history that we have general-purpose computing at all [0] and a good accident. But because it's such a good outcome for society, the society in question _should_ look to create more of this. Like how democracy is a mere accident, but it's a good outcome, and society should work to replicate it and improve it. If parties under the current system don't stand to benefit, but the over all benefit is greater, then it's a good choice. Apple isn't entitled to own their walled garden - it's not a right. It's their privilege they built, but society can tear it down by decree if tearing it down leads to better outcome for society.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  As someone that enjoyed the gardens of 8 and 16 bit computing, the accident was interesting, but I still would rather that Amiga and Atari gardens would have won over the PC.
danShumway 6y ago
When you put a barrier of entry on top of an activity, you will usually find that a large portion of the people who still take part in that activity are doing so because they have strong, even illegal reasons to take part in it. If you outlawed general-purpose computing, a large majority of the people who still wrote code afterwards would be black-hat hackers. If you outlawed car repair, the majority of the people who took apart their cars anyway would be installing illegal, unsafe mods. If you were able to successfully outlaw encryption, such that there were genuine barriers to encrypting a message, then the majority of people who used encryption under the table would be people who were communicating about breaking the law. The only people who are willing to jump through the significant hoops required to sideload on consoles are people who are either strongly motivated to write their own code and fix their own problems (ie, the almost ideological, morally driven homebrew community) and pirates. But part of the reason that's the case is because more legitimate actors can't enter the space. There is no modding scene on consoles. There are no 7th graders making Xbox games using kits that they can distribute to their friends. There are no widely popular homebrew kits that almost everyone accepts as improvements over the default experience. There is no competition between distribution channels. There are no custom stores with specialized filters and moderation for niche content. There are a lot of reasons why we might want to have dedicated, single-purpose hardware that can still be modified by normal people, but calls to say, "show me the community for this, and then I will allow the community to exist" are just backwards. I can't show that the majority of people hacking consoles are just writing mods for Zelda games and releasing custom 3DS themes, because the majority of people are not allowed to do that. It's not surprising that the people who buy specialized vulnerable games or modchips to reflash their expensive hardware at the risk of being permanently banned by the companies who make that hardware -- that the majority of those people are already used to breaking rules, and that many of them then look at piracy and say, "eh, I've already gone this far, what on earth do I have to lose?" Of course pirates are common among sideloaders, you can have your accounts banned and your legal games taken away if you make a mistake. Who the heck other than most dedicated people are going to take that risk? What is surprising is that there's any homebrew community on these consoles at all -- that even with all of the stupid risks involved, that people are still willing to follow the law and engage with hacked hardware in a legal way that fosters a creative ecosystem of mods and custom software.

kevingadd 6y ago

The XBox has been allowing sideloading for a while now (XBox One and now Series X) and it hasn't caused any problems. XBox Live Indie Games for 360 was also not an issue. Sony had sideloading for homebrew on PlayStation at various points in time too. I think making it a required policy (with allowed constraints) would not be harmful to consoles at all. Requiring third party stores is more difficult, but honestly I don't think most people would need them if you can just sideload.

Zelizz 6y ago
Don't you have to boot into developer mode on Xbox to run sideloaded apps? AFAIK you also can't access any store titles when in dev mode either. And UWP apps don't get access to the full power of the console, they run under the system OS.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Every game on a modern console runs under the system OS, there's a hypervisor and dedicated CPU/RAM resources, etc. You can run actual games in that environment and the performance allocation is documented. Certainly for professional-grade stuff you don't want to be in that environment but it definitely works. You're right about the dev mode toggle, which is unfortunate. I'd like to see barriers like that go away, and it wouldn't be appropriate on productivity hardware. I don't have any expert inside information on this but I suspect it's an absolute requirement from game studios that don't want side-loaded apps being used to cheat or exfiltrate content - I think that shouldn't require a hard reboot of the console but maybe it's similar to the situation Riot has arrived at with Valorant where they demand full kernel-level control over your system from boot to determine whether you are trying to cheat at their games or not.