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You may have but the rest of the world did so with a lot of hand-wringing and a boatload of viruses, toolbars, malware, and everything else. As someone who has

You may have but the rest of the world did so with a lot of hand-wringing and a boatload of viruses, toolbars, malware, and everything else. As someone who has worked in IT and in tech support, I get and agree with what Apple has done.

sheepdestroyer 6y ago
App store are good, not argument. The inability of side loading beside the store is what is being critisized.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  That's literally a major reason why people buy Apple products, though. If you can't sideload things, there's literally no chance of your phone being compromised by those things.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Thats like claiming Isaak newton was a great scientist because he stayed a virgin. People buy iPhones and tolerate lack of sideloading.
    - nxc18 6y ago
      If you’re going to make that claim, you’ll need to back it up with literally any evidence or even anecdote. I buy iPhone because it is basically the only reliable computer I own, and a single, reputable source of software is a big part of that. Not being extorted into installing Steam is a huge part of that. No, I didn’t _really_ have a choice to install Steam and I fucking hate it, thank you very much.
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      What? That's a terrible analogy. I don't even understand what point you're trying to make. Those 2 things aren't related. A large percentage of iPhone users buy the device because there are less avenues for issues.
  - gerash 6y ago
    Is part of your reasoning also the fact that devs can't even mention in their apps that they have a website that users can buy their subscription from?
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      No but that's a reasonable restriction considering that apps would still benefit from the App Store ecosystem but would be able to circumvent the requirements of it.
      - ubersync 6y ago
        Wait, what? You argued that a single app store makes apple devices safer. How does not allowing devs to sell subscriptions on their website help with this arguable safety? Don't bullshit.
        geocar 6y ago
        > How does not allowing devs to sell subscriptions on their website help with this arguable safety? By making sure the user has a single channel for dealing with payments and complaints. Deliveroo did an update their software that wiped out my login settings. They didn't support apple login, so I lost access to my account. They won't recover my email because of a special character in it, and so they continued to charge me for their "plus" service every month, and avoided any emails I tried to send asking to stop (asking me to "log in" to change my payment settings!). Requiring apps use Apple's channel would have protected me from that experience. > Don't bullshit. If you're not trying to be persuaded, why are you arguing?
        dkonofalski 6y ago
        I'm not bullshitting and I'll use myself as an example. I love the fact that any payments on iOS go through Apple Pay. If anything ever happens to my payment or contact info, I know who to blame. If every developer is able to process transactions and collect my personal info, then every developer is a vector for my payment or account information getting out to the world. I don't know what they do with my info, I don't know who they sell my data to. With Apple, I know the answers to all those questions.
  - conradfr 6y ago
    And yet the guy making bogus app clones with subscriptions makes millions from the App Store (and Apple takes its cut).
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      What does that have to do with anything? That's still not malware.
  - stale2002 6y ago
    > If you can't sideload things Ok, and if you simply had a setting that you could turn on, that make it so your phone couldn't side load, then you still get what you want. Everyone wins, by simply giving you the option to turn off side loading, but letting others choose to do so if they want to.
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      No, everyone doesn't win because that exact situation has already been used before by Windows with UAC and Android with developer mode and malware/virus peddlers just started to include instructions on how to bypass those things.
      - matwood 6y ago
        Not sure why you're downvoted b/c FB was already caught doing something similar with enterprise certs. https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/30/facebook_apple_enterprise_certificate_revocation/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/30/facebook_apple_enterp...
      - wayneftw 6y ago
        Why are you advocating for the lowest common denominator among humans? Are you sure you really want to be doing that? If that's the case, take away all the knives, require people to get a license to have kids, don't let them drive cars, take away all of the dangerous things in life so that everybody can be secure. It's just a ridiculous argument to say that we must have only this one particular app store to keep everybody safe. There are a lot of solutions to this. I don't care if I have to sign a written agreement to allow me to sideload things, just give me a way to do it. People who trade liberty for security are absolutely one of the biggest problems in this world. You should be advocating for people to smarten up instead. Otherwise you're going to wake up one day and you're not going to be able to make a move without asking for big brothers permission. And, if you say that people have a choice to go on Android well, then they have a choice already don't they? Did the existence of that choice automatically screw the entirety of society? No it did not. So there's no problem with also giving them a choice to sideload. You're acting like everybody will immediately flip the switch to sideload things. They already made a good choice by going on an iPhone, why are you discounting that people won't also make other good choices? You want people to throw out the baby with the bathwater. If I want to sideload one damn thing that doesn't mean I want to give up the comfort and security of the rest of my iPhone ecosystem.
  - t-writescode 6y ago
    When the next Matrix or whatever service gets taken off the app store for hate speech on decentralized servers, I'll be grateful for a way to sideload if this goes through. As it is, I have to trust Apple to "not be evil", something Google certainly failed at.
  - pombrand 6y ago
    > That's literally a major reason why people buy Apple products, though. If you can't sideload things, there's literally no chance of your phone being compromised by those things. False. People who don't want to take risk simply don't sideload, most people don't know how to anyways even on android - having the /option/ to do so is not a negative. Android allows is and there's nearly no malware https://duo.com/decipher/google-data-shows-tiny-fraction-of-android-devices-run-malicious-apps https://duo.com/decipher/google-data-shows-tiny-fraction-of-...
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      It's not false. We already went through this when people first learned you could jailbreak an iPhone. People don't know the risks involved with sideloading. They just see that some jerk has "video wallpaper" and "custom icons" on their iOS and they want that so they find someone to jailbreak and install those apps without ever recognizing that they have compromised their device. That's literally the entire point here. Also, that's a very naive position if you're just going to go by that article. That only covers "known" malware and only Android phones that they have been able to actually register has having these apps installed. Malware is not going to phone home to Google. It's going to do it's damndest to hide itself. Side note: wtf kind of word is damndest? I always thought it was damnest.
  - redwall_hp 6y ago
    Imagine how much safer it would be if you got rid of the App Store and weren't allowed to install any third party software.
iknowstuff 6y ago
FYI, the iOS sandboxing model is the innovation behind the security of iOS. It is separate from the notion of having an app store. Apps would be just as restricted from accessing your data and modifying the OS as they are through their own store. So this argument is wrong but will be peddled by Apple for sure. PC operating systems had viruses because of the non-restrictive, unsandboxed access their APIs gave to every app.
- nodamage 6y ago
  1. Sandboxing might help prevent certain types of attacks but the App Store review process goes above and beyond simple API restrictions and imposes rules on how you're allowed to use those APIs to prevent abuse of privacy. For example: just because I grant an app access to my contacts/photos for a legitimate purpose doesn't mean I want that company to exfiltrate that data and sell it to a third party. Sandboxing won't help you there. 2. Sandboxing is no panacea as we've seen from multiple Android malware attacks that abuse system vulnerabilities to break out of the sandbox. You're also underestimating the amount of damage that can be done even within the sandbox: - The CryCryptor ransomware abuses file access APIs to encrypt photos and videos on external storage and hold them hostage. (https://threatpost.com/emerging-ransomware-photos-videos-android/156893/ https://threatpost.com/emerging-ransomware-photos-videos-and...) - The DEFENSOR ID banking trojan abuses accessibility APIs to steal login credentials, text messages, and 2FA codes. (https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/05/22/insidious-android-malware-gives-up-all-malicious-features-but-one-gain-stealth/0/ https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/05/22/insidious-android-...)
- LexGray 6y ago
  Part of the Apple sandboxing model is to run a check on binaries to make sure internal APIs are not being abused, or other shenanigans. I would not trust the Apple sandbox at all, especially with the privacy in place which prevents any sort of auditing of what people are doing to their devices.
- threeseed 6y ago
  Objective-C based dynamic dispatch allows you to call private, internal APIs from your code effectively bypassing the iOS sandbox. App Store review process specifically checks for this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ubersync 6y ago
I went into your history and ALL of your comments are for defending Apple on Apple related stories or defending Apple on non-apple related stories. You are clearly an Apple shill. How much are you getting paid?
- tester756 6y ago
  You might like it or not, but his argument here actually stands.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  $0. I'm not an Apple employee and all my comments are not defending Apple. Most of them might be because I only go on HN to discuss programming and Apple. Interesting, though, that instead of actually arguing any of my points, you want to claim, without any proof, that I'm a shill based on what I like to talk about. Instead of attacking me based on my history, how about actually addressing the points I'm making? Clearly you're unable or unwilling to do so.

sheepdestroyer 6y ago

App store are good, not argument. The inability of side loading beside the store is what is being critisized.

dkonofalski 6y ago
That's literally a major reason why people buy Apple products, though. If you can't sideload things, there's literally no chance of your phone being compromised by those things.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Thats like claiming Isaak newton was a great scientist because he stayed a virgin. People buy iPhones and tolerate lack of sideloading.
  - nxc18 6y ago
    If you’re going to make that claim, you’ll need to back it up with literally any evidence or even anecdote. I buy iPhone because it is basically the only reliable computer I own, and a single, reputable source of software is a big part of that. Not being extorted into installing Steam is a huge part of that. No, I didn’t _really_ have a choice to install Steam and I fucking hate it, thank you very much.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    What? That's a terrible analogy. I don't even understand what point you're trying to make. Those 2 things aren't related. A large percentage of iPhone users buy the device because there are less avenues for issues.
- gerash 6y ago
  Is part of your reasoning also the fact that devs can't even mention in their apps that they have a website that users can buy their subscription from?
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    No but that's a reasonable restriction considering that apps would still benefit from the App Store ecosystem but would be able to circumvent the requirements of it.
    - ubersync 6y ago
      Wait, what? You argued that a single app store makes apple devices safer. How does not allowing devs to sell subscriptions on their website help with this arguable safety? Don't bullshit.
      - geocar 6y ago
        > How does not allowing devs to sell subscriptions on their website help with this arguable safety? By making sure the user has a single channel for dealing with payments and complaints. Deliveroo did an update their software that wiped out my login settings. They didn't support apple login, so I lost access to my account. They won't recover my email because of a special character in it, and so they continued to charge me for their "plus" service every month, and avoided any emails I tried to send asking to stop (asking me to "log in" to change my payment settings!). Requiring apps use Apple's channel would have protected me from that experience. > Don't bullshit. If you're not trying to be persuaded, why are you arguing?
      - dkonofalski 6y ago
        I'm not bullshitting and I'll use myself as an example. I love the fact that any payments on iOS go through Apple Pay. If anything ever happens to my payment or contact info, I know who to blame. If every developer is able to process transactions and collect my personal info, then every developer is a vector for my payment or account information getting out to the world. I don't know what they do with my info, I don't know who they sell my data to. With Apple, I know the answers to all those questions.
- conradfr 6y ago
  And yet the guy making bogus app clones with subscriptions makes millions from the App Store (and Apple takes its cut).
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    What does that have to do with anything? That's still not malware.
- stale2002 6y ago
  > If you can't sideload things Ok, and if you simply had a setting that you could turn on, that make it so your phone couldn't side load, then you still get what you want. Everyone wins, by simply giving you the option to turn off side loading, but letting others choose to do so if they want to.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    No, everyone doesn't win because that exact situation has already been used before by Windows with UAC and Android with developer mode and malware/virus peddlers just started to include instructions on how to bypass those things.
    - matwood 6y ago
      Not sure why you're downvoted b/c FB was already caught doing something similar with enterprise certs. https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/30/facebook_apple_enterprise_certificate_revocation/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/30/facebook_apple_enterp...
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      Why are you advocating for the lowest common denominator among humans? Are you sure you really want to be doing that? If that's the case, take away all the knives, require people to get a license to have kids, don't let them drive cars, take away all of the dangerous things in life so that everybody can be secure. It's just a ridiculous argument to say that we must have only this one particular app store to keep everybody safe. There are a lot of solutions to this. I don't care if I have to sign a written agreement to allow me to sideload things, just give me a way to do it. People who trade liberty for security are absolutely one of the biggest problems in this world. You should be advocating for people to smarten up instead. Otherwise you're going to wake up one day and you're not going to be able to make a move without asking for big brothers permission. And, if you say that people have a choice to go on Android well, then they have a choice already don't they? Did the existence of that choice automatically screw the entirety of society? No it did not. So there's no problem with also giving them a choice to sideload. You're acting like everybody will immediately flip the switch to sideload things. They already made a good choice by going on an iPhone, why are you discounting that people won't also make other good choices? You want people to throw out the baby with the bathwater. If I want to sideload one damn thing that doesn't mean I want to give up the comfort and security of the rest of my iPhone ecosystem.
- t-writescode 6y ago
  When the next Matrix or whatever service gets taken off the app store for hate speech on decentralized servers, I'll be grateful for a way to sideload if this goes through. As it is, I have to trust Apple to "not be evil", something Google certainly failed at.
- pombrand 6y ago
  > That's literally a major reason why people buy Apple products, though. If you can't sideload things, there's literally no chance of your phone being compromised by those things. False. People who don't want to take risk simply don't sideload, most people don't know how to anyways even on android - having the /option/ to do so is not a negative. Android allows is and there's nearly no malware https://duo.com/decipher/google-data-shows-tiny-fraction-of-android-devices-run-malicious-apps https://duo.com/decipher/google-data-shows-tiny-fraction-of-...
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    It's not false. We already went through this when people first learned you could jailbreak an iPhone. People don't know the risks involved with sideloading. They just see that some jerk has "video wallpaper" and "custom icons" on their iOS and they want that so they find someone to jailbreak and install those apps without ever recognizing that they have compromised their device. That's literally the entire point here. Also, that's a very naive position if you're just going to go by that article. That only covers "known" malware and only Android phones that they have been able to actually register has having these apps installed. Malware is not going to phone home to Google. It's going to do it's damndest to hide itself. Side note: wtf kind of word is damndest? I always thought it was damnest.
- redwall_hp 6y ago
  Imagine how much safer it would be if you got rid of the App Store and weren't allowed to install any third party software.

iknowstuff 6y ago

FYI, the iOS sandboxing model is the innovation behind the security of iOS. It is separate from the notion of having an app store. Apps would be just as restricted from accessing your data and modifying the OS as they are through their own store. So this argument is wrong but will be peddled by Apple for sure. PC operating systems had viruses because of the non-restrictive, unsandboxed access their APIs gave to every app.

nodamage 6y ago
1. Sandboxing might help prevent certain types of attacks but the App Store review process goes above and beyond simple API restrictions and imposes rules on how you're allowed to use those APIs to prevent abuse of privacy. For example: just because I grant an app access to my contacts/photos for a legitimate purpose doesn't mean I want that company to exfiltrate that data and sell it to a third party. Sandboxing won't help you there. 2. Sandboxing is no panacea as we've seen from multiple Android malware attacks that abuse system vulnerabilities to break out of the sandbox. You're also underestimating the amount of damage that can be done even within the sandbox: - The CryCryptor ransomware abuses file access APIs to encrypt photos and videos on external storage and hold them hostage. (https://threatpost.com/emerging-ransomware-photos-videos-android/156893/ https://threatpost.com/emerging-ransomware-photos-videos-and...) - The DEFENSOR ID banking trojan abuses accessibility APIs to steal login credentials, text messages, and 2FA codes. (https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/05/22/insidious-android-malware-gives-up-all-malicious-features-but-one-gain-stealth/0/ https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/05/22/insidious-android-...)
LexGray 6y ago
Part of the Apple sandboxing model is to run a check on binaries to make sure internal APIs are not being abused, or other shenanigans. I would not trust the Apple sandbox at all, especially with the privacy in place which prevents any sort of auditing of what people are doing to their devices.
threeseed 6y ago
Objective-C based dynamic dispatch allows you to call private, internal APIs from your code effectively bypassing the iOS sandbox. App Store review process specifically checks for this.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ubersync 6y ago

I went into your history and ALL of your comments are for defending Apple on Apple related stories or defending Apple on non-apple related stories. You are clearly an Apple shill. How much are you getting paid?

tester756 6y ago
You might like it or not, but his argument here actually stands.
dkonofalski 6y ago
$0. I'm not an Apple employee and all my comments are not defending Apple. Most of them might be because I only go on HN to discuss programming and Apple. Interesting, though, that instead of actually arguing any of my points, you want to claim, without any proof, that I'm a shill based on what I like to talk about. Instead of attacking me based on my history, how about actually addressing the points I'm making? Clearly you're unable or unwilling to do so.