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He's not wrong. Apple's garden-walling was become extensive enough that it's gone beyond ensuring a good experience for their users, and has started to damage t

He's not wrong. Apple's garden-walling was become extensive enough that it's gone beyond ensuring a good experience for their users, and has started to damage the platform. This should have been obvious to them since jailbreaking became so common, but I guess it hasn't quite sunk in yet. Apple needs to allow people to use their platform, or it won't become as good as it deserves to be.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
charlesju 18y ago
I respectfully disagree. I think it is important to wall off the platform and sandbox the environment. This prevents things like stack attacks with walled off memory and background processes doing things it should not. With so much personal information on the mobile phone, it'll be a complete nightmare if one of the applications is really a virus that spreads as a background process. Since it can contact your ENTIRE contact list, such a viral infection can crippling. In fact, in the Jailbroken iPhone community there have already been a couple of viruses. But on the other hand, they should open up a couple more APIs, the camera, specifically.
- tptacek 18y ago
  None of the limitations being discussed with the iPhone have anything to do with whether programs are vulnerable to "stack attacks". The iPhone doesn't even have background processes. And "virus" is just a scary-sounding word for "program that deletes important files on your behalf". Don't run those. I respect the "walled garden" as a business decision; it's Apple's platform, and maximizing its revenue is their prerogative. As a technical safeguard, there's no evidence that it works.
  - tomsucks 18y ago
    Here's my top: http://pastie.org/246884 http://pastie.org/246884 MobileSafari, MobileMail, MobilePhone, all running in the background. fairplayd is the fairplay daemon, commcenter manages communications (all of them), springboard is the desktop, lockdownd is the little thing that checks to make sure the phone is activated (and locks it down if not) only the top three apps (bash, top, sshd) aren't there on a vanilla iPhone. Apple's apps will run in the background, but other (app store) apps exit completely when you return to the home screen.
    - tptacek 18y ago
      Sorry, you're right. Apple can do whatever it wants on their phone, as you've pointed out. Evil third party developers can't.
      - tomsucks 18y ago
        Technically, good nda-abiding sdk-using $99-paying developers can't, evil ones that write their apps for jailbroken phones can ;)
  - stcredzero 18y ago
    AFAIK, the iPhone does have background processes. Apple just won't let you have at them! Apple could easily write a specialized API that lets you run virtualized background processes. This would be an improvement on the current situation, but it would maintain heightened security.
- jonknee 18y ago
  That's a valid point, but is the same for Mac OS X. You have even more personal information on your desktop. Thankfully we're not limited to a single source for Mac OS X apps.
- dejb 18y ago
  From what you are saying you'd think the iphone is the first phone OS capable of running third party apps ever. Other phone OS's have been able to do this for 5 years and many of them haven't needed to restrict users so badly including Windows Mobile, Palm OS and in some cases Symbian.
axod 18y ago
Completely disagree. As a consumer, I just want the thing to work. The best way to ensure that, is to have control of the platform. The lack of a glut of apps, some badly written is hardly damaging the platform, it's maintaining the quality of the user experience, which I'm extremely glad about.
- alexfarran 18y ago
  Does that mantra come on a card with your iphone?
  - axod 18y ago
    Yeah they're currently brainwashing people to buy the iPhone which is sold out most of the time. In actual fact no one wants to buy it, as the average joe on the street is incandescent with rage over their restrictive NDA for 3rd party developers. It's really tiresome to hear people whine and moan on and on about apple, and to label anyone that disagrees a fanboy. If you don't like the iPhone, simple - don't buy one.
- jcl 18y ago
  As the article points out, this is exactly the same argument they made to justify the webapp-only restriction in the previous iteration. That particular restriction has now been lifted and the world has not ended... It makes you wonder why the restriction was there in the first place, and how important the current set of restrictions will turn out to be.
  - axod 18y ago
    webapp-only restriction? You make it sound like creating the whole native app infrastructure was as simple as them clicking [enable]. I don't know if I'm a typical user, but I still use webapps most of the time. The native apps I've seen or tried are quite a mixed bag at the moment.
    - ajross 18y ago
      Considering that (1) the jailbreak folks had a dev environment within a month of release with zero support from Apple and (2) the phone shipped with a bunch of applications that had to have been written with, y'know, tools of some kind; I'd say that yes, it really was about as easy as clicking "enable". Apple is a quick agile company and certainly has shipped products quickly in the past. You're honestly arguing that taking 13 months (or whatever it was) to release a native SDK was because they just couldn't do it any faster?

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

charlesju 18y ago

I respectfully disagree. I think it is important to wall off the platform and sandbox the environment. This prevents things like stack attacks with walled off memory and background processes doing things it should not. With so much personal information on the mobile phone, it'll be a complete nightmare if one of the applications is really a virus that spreads as a background process. Since it can contact your ENTIRE contact list, such a viral infection can crippling. In fact, in the Jailbroken iPhone community there have already been a couple of viruses. But on the other hand, they should open up a couple more APIs, the camera, specifically.

tptacek 18y ago
None of the limitations being discussed with the iPhone have anything to do with whether programs are vulnerable to "stack attacks". The iPhone doesn't even have background processes. And "virus" is just a scary-sounding word for "program that deletes important files on your behalf". Don't run those. I respect the "walled garden" as a business decision; it's Apple's platform, and maximizing its revenue is their prerogative. As a technical safeguard, there's no evidence that it works.
- tomsucks 18y ago
  Here's my top: http://pastie.org/246884 http://pastie.org/246884 MobileSafari, MobileMail, MobilePhone, all running in the background. fairplayd is the fairplay daemon, commcenter manages communications (all of them), springboard is the desktop, lockdownd is the little thing that checks to make sure the phone is activated (and locks it down if not) only the top three apps (bash, top, sshd) aren't there on a vanilla iPhone. Apple's apps will run in the background, but other (app store) apps exit completely when you return to the home screen.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Sorry, you're right. Apple can do whatever it wants on their phone, as you've pointed out. Evil third party developers can't.
    - tomsucks 18y ago
      Technically, good nda-abiding sdk-using $99-paying developers can't, evil ones that write their apps for jailbroken phones can ;)
- stcredzero 18y ago
  AFAIK, the iPhone does have background processes. Apple just won't let you have at them! Apple could easily write a specialized API that lets you run virtualized background processes. This would be an improvement on the current situation, but it would maintain heightened security.
jonknee 18y ago
That's a valid point, but is the same for Mac OS X. You have even more personal information on your desktop. Thankfully we're not limited to a single source for Mac OS X apps.
dejb 18y ago
From what you are saying you'd think the iphone is the first phone OS capable of running third party apps ever. Other phone OS's have been able to do this for 5 years and many of them haven't needed to restrict users so badly including Windows Mobile, Palm OS and in some cases Symbian.

axod 18y ago

Completely disagree. As a consumer, I just want the thing to work. The best way to ensure that, is to have control of the platform. The lack of a glut of apps, some badly written is hardly damaging the platform, it's maintaining the quality of the user experience, which I'm extremely glad about.

alexfarran 18y ago
Does that mantra come on a card with your iphone?
- axod 18y ago
  Yeah they're currently brainwashing people to buy the iPhone which is sold out most of the time. In actual fact no one wants to buy it, as the average joe on the street is incandescent with rage over their restrictive NDA for 3rd party developers. It's really tiresome to hear people whine and moan on and on about apple, and to label anyone that disagrees a fanboy. If you don't like the iPhone, simple - don't buy one.
jcl 18y ago
As the article points out, this is exactly the same argument they made to justify the webapp-only restriction in the previous iteration. That particular restriction has now been lifted and the world has not ended... It makes you wonder why the restriction was there in the first place, and how important the current set of restrictions will turn out to be.
- axod 18y ago
  webapp-only restriction? You make it sound like creating the whole native app infrastructure was as simple as them clicking [enable]. I don't know if I'm a typical user, but I still use webapps most of the time. The native apps I've seen or tried are quite a mixed bag at the moment.
  - ajross 18y ago
    Considering that (1) the jailbreak folks had a dev environment within a month of release with zero support from Apple and (2) the phone shipped with a bunch of applications that had to have been written with, y'know, tools of some kind; I'd say that yes, it really was about as easy as clicking "enable". Apple is a quick agile company and certainly has shipped products quickly in the past. You're honestly arguing that taking 13 months (or whatever it was) to release a native SDK was because they just couldn't do it any faster?